


Moment of Inertia

by epistolic



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:37:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistolic/pseuds/epistolic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For no apparent reason, Arthur begins to hunt down his former teammates from the Fischer job - all except for Eames.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moment of Inertia

**Author's Note:**

> Re-post from [my original LJ version](http://epistolic.livejournal.com/40371.html) for archiving reasons.

_In this dream, you are in a holding cell._

_“Who do you work for?” a man is screaming at you._

  
\--

[10]

“ – who you are anymore.”

Back against the bookshelves, with the sharp crunch of broken glass under his shoes, the first bullet hits Arthur high in the chest. Even with the vest the impact knocks the air from his lungs. He falls backward, roughly, but doesn’t grab for his gun because even through the bruise imprinting itself beneath his clavicle Arthur registers that it’s Eames that’s shooting at him. The bullet that should have killed him belongs to Eames. In that singular moment, with Beatrice Potter and Cormac McCarthy digging into his spine, Arthur realises that he’s going to die. On his knees, ribs taut. He is going to die.

When the second bullet enters Arthur’s skull, his mouth is halfway through forming a word. The word never emerges from Arthur’s throat. On the floor of Cobb’s house all of a sudden it is over, and the slow slick of blood spreads beneath the bookshelf.

  
\--

_The pistol strikes you squarely across the cheekbone and you feel it shatter. Your sight instantly blinks out. The left side of your face feels strangely light, as if the pain is buoyant, and suddenly you’re aware that there’s blood in your mouth. You’ve bitten through the flesh of your lip. From the unsatisfied, savage look on the man’s face, you realise that you haven’t cried out._

_“Who do you work for? Who are you working with?”_

_You blink slowly to clear your vision. You keep your jaw clenched shut._

  
\--

[09]

“ – talk to you about a job.”

There’s the sound of a chain being taken off the door, which then opens. Cobb’s face appears in the gap. He’s paler than usual, dressed in a tatty sweater with a coffee stain just above his bellybutton. The sound of James and Phillipa arguing in the background is louder now with the front door ajar.

Arthur cranes a little to look inside. “Bad timing?”

“I’m trying to put them to bed,” Cobb says, sounding stressed. He drags a hand up through his hair. “But come in, come in. We can talk once they’re asleep.”

The lights are off in the hallway. Arthur follows Cobb through to the kitchen, where James has upset a glass of chocolate milk; Phillipa is trying to clean up the mess with what looks like half the contents of a Kleenex box. Cobb immediately swoops in with a kitchen roll, forgets to rip the tissue off at the serrated line, and instead just puts the entire thing – cardboard centre included – straight into the milk. Watching them, and watching Cobb stand there swearing loudly, Arthur feels something fond and uncomfortable notch in his chest.

“You take them upstairs and I’ll fix this up,” Arthur offers. “Go on, Dom.”

Cobb throws the roll down in disgust. “I can’t believe I just dunked this in there, for Christ’s sake.”

James is bawling by now. Phillipa begins to sniffle.

“Phillipa, sweetheart,” Arthur says, crouching down to her level and gently taking the tissue box out of her hands. “You take your brother upstairs to bed, alright?”

“There’s milk all over my hair,” Phillipa wails. Her small hand clutches Arthur’s lapel.

“Your daddy can help you wash it out.”

“Can’t you come?”

Arthur hesitates visibly. When he shifts, the barely-perceptible line of the Glock in his waistband disappears.

Cobb shoots him an almost desperate look.

“Alright. If you promise not to cry,” Arthur says, stroking Phillipa’s hair back out of her face. His palm comes back moist and sticky from the milk. “And if you promise not to fight with your brother again.”

They make a strange sight climbing up the stairs, Phillipa holding on to three of Arthur’s fingers and James peering dolefully at her from over Cobb’s right shoulder. Once upstairs, Arthur rinses Phillipa’s hair in the sink; he takes care not to get any soap in her ears. The bowl of the sink is treated to a half-audible string of school occurrences: Celia’s lost tooth, the soccer ball in the gutter, Phillipa’s missing copy of _Where the Wild Things Are_. Arthur tries not to listen because it makes things hard, as does watching Cobb hunt for James’ teddy bear beneath the bed. As the minutes pass the gun seems to grow heavier. Arthur finds it increasingly hard to meet Phillipa’s eye.

When her hair is finally clean, towelled dry and combed, Arthur tucks Phillipa into bed. Cobb smoothes down the few loose strands of her fringe.

“Good night,” Cobb says, and Arthur is suddenly afraid to look into Cobb’s face for all the tenderness there.

“Good night, Daddy,” Phillipa says. “Good night, Uncle Arthur.”

“Good night,” Arthur whispers.

Once they’re back on the landing, Cobb quietly closes the door of Phillipa’s room behind them. James, in the next room over, is already silent; his name is spelt in brightly-coloured wooden letters on his now-closed door.

“She’s grown taller,” Arthur notes.

Cobb makes a hybrid sound, half laugh and half choked-off sigh. “You should see her play soccer. She gets all the points. She’s the best on her team.”

“I’ll bet she is.”

“Can’t have gotten it from me,” Cobb says eventually, turning into the kitchen and pulling up at the bench. He plants his hands on his hips, surveying the scene critically. “I always ran the wrong way on the soccer pitch.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Arthur says. “So long as they don’t pass you the ball, you’re perfectly harmless.”

“Mal could play,” Cobb says.

Arthur says nothing to that, picks up the milk-soaked kitchen roll and tosses the whole sopping thing into the rubbish. Cobb disappears for a moment and comes back with a mop. Arthur takes it from him, before waving him off to the side to prevent any further damage.

“Mal could always get them to go to bed quietly,” Cobb says, very soft. “Mal could always remember their favourite sandwich fillings. I can never – I always give Phillipa peanut butter by mistake.”

Arthur pauses. _You miss her_ , teeters on the edge of his tongue, but he doesn’t say it.

“I love them so much,” Cobb says.

“If anything ever happened to you,” Arthur says carefully, not looking up from his mop, “I promise you I’ll take good care of them. I promise.”

Cobb nods, accepting it. “I know.”

“You don’t need to worry about them.”

Cobb nods again. Arthur dumps the mop in its bucket and wrings out the water, dragging it over the spot on the floor a last time, more to stall than for actual cleanliness.

“You wanted to discuss something with me?” Cobb says finally. He props his elbows onto the kitchen bench.

“Yeah,” Arthur says, putting the mop aside haltingly. “I’m working on a job in Amsterdam – ”

Suddenly, there’s the sound of James shrieking upstairs. Cobb jerks upright as if a ventriloquist has pulled his strings. An all-encompassing, flooding relief goes through Arthur’s stomach as Cobb dashes for the stairs, yelling out to James about a nightmare, and the moment he’s out of sight Arthur reaches behind him and pulls out the Glock to stare at it.

Underneath his striped shirt, Arthur’s wearing a vest. It’s not that he really expects any trouble from Cobb – the man would never shoot Arthur, like he would never shoot Mal – but it’s precaution, good practice, and Arthur wears it anyway. With the safety on, Arthur hooks his finger in the trigger and balances the gun carefully in one hand. The light from the kitchen fluorescents catch the metal of the slide. For a second all Arthur wants to do is drop the gun to the floor, to hear the dead clatter of it.

“There are children upstairs.”

Immediately, Arthur forms a grip on the gun but it’s just Eames, in the doorway that leads to the study. James is still crying – Arthur can hear him through the ceiling. Eames’ face is wary but otherwise studiously blank.

Arthur lowers the gun. “I was going to take him to a café.”

“This late?” Eames asks. “Are there any still open?”

“No,” says Arthur.

Eames is wearing a crumpled suit without a tie; Arthur can almost still smell the airplane on him.

“You flew here all the way from Nairobi?” Arthur says, surprised, when Eames doesn’t say anything.

“I saw what you did in Amsterdam,” says Eames. “And you lied to me about Ariadne.”

Arthur flinches and looks away. It seems to be what Eames is waiting for, because in a moment Eames is right in front of him and hauling him in by his suit lapels. Arthur fights instinctively for a split second but then goes forward with the motion. Eames’ eyes are bloodshot, like he hasn’t slept.

“What are you doing, Arthur?” Eames hisses at him, pressed close and almost feverish. The blank look has completely left his face. “What are you _doing_?”

“I don’t want to give you up,” Arthur says.

“You – ”

“I do it quickly. I don’t ever hurt them.”

“You hurt _me_ ,” Eames says, his knuckles white. “When I heard what had happened – Jesus Christ – ”

“I want to stop that sort of thing from happening to you.”

Eames stops and stares into Arthur’s face, incredulous. “What are you talking about?”

Eames is close enough that his breath tickles Arthur’s lip, the faint scent of lemongrass and sandalwood mingling in with that of leather, cigarettes. It’s familiar enough for Arthur to sway in towards it, eyes locked on the red of Eames’ mouth; Eames stops him with a fist in the front of his jacket, anchoring him. Arthur’s hand twitches slightly at this, as if aborting a movement to Eames’ hip.

“Did you know Nash?” Arthur asks Eames suddenly.

“What?”

“He tried to sell me out – me and Cobb – did you know him?”

“No,” Eames says, voice cautious and low. “Not in person. Is he the reason why you’re doing this?”

“Fuck, Eames, you’re so goddamn _blind_ ,” Arthur bursts out. Before Eames has the time to respond to this Arthur’s pressed himself flush against Eames’ front, hips aligned, face turning up to catch Eames’ bottom lip in between the trap of his teeth. There’s a moment when Eames kisses back by rote, hands flattening over Arthur’s lapels and winging out to feel the planes of Arthur’s chest; all wet glide of mouth and the volatile, fierce quality of theirs that winds itself into even the most gentle of their moments.

“Come home,” Eames manages, the second they pull apart. His throat sounds raw and his hands have formed fists again. “Cobb has children, it’s not the same, Arthur, just come home – ”

“They killed Nash,” Arthur says into the millimetres of air between them.

“If anyone comes for you I’ll fucking kill them, I promise – ”

“It’s not _me_ – ”

“I’m not going to let you do this,” Eames snarls. “Whatever it is you’re doing, it has to _stop_.”

“No.”

Arthur twists away before Eames can tighten his grip, pushing off the edge of the kitchen counter and making for the foot of the staircase. By sheer reflex Eames catches Arthur’s wrist. With the momentum of it Arthur manages to get his hand around, fingers flexing, and then there’s the sick snap of bone and Eames hisses.

“Don’t make me shoot you in the leg,” Arthur says, almost pleading.

Eames rams him into the wall. Even with a broken wrist Eames is a dangerous match, forearm slamming itself across Arthur’s throat until Arthur lands a blow to his left side, cracking one or two ribs. Eames fights with a curious mix of boxing and military and street-side brawl, Arthur with a careful precision. The greatest problem is that they’ve done this before, too many times, and they’ve known each other for too many years – so when Arthur throws Eames off into the doorjamb of the study, the back of his skull cracking against the wood, it’s no surprise; and when Eames gets in a vicious kick and Arthur’s shin-bone fractures, that’s nothing unusual. There is blood dripping off of Arthur’s jaw when he collapses toward the floor with a grunt, though he catches himself just in time on the study’s doorknob. Eames spits out a dislodged tooth.

“Don’t make me shoot you,” Arthur grits out for the second time.

“Once upon a time you’d only ever do that in dreams,” Eames says. He’s breathing hard, mouth bloody. “Are things different, now?”

“I’m not going to lose you.”

“There’s no-one after me, Arthur. No-one.”

Arthur straightens himself, slowly. “You wouldn’t know.”

“For fuck’s sake – ”

“What on earth is happening here?”

The moment Cobb appears at the bottom of the stairs, Arthur goes for his Glock. Eames lunges forward at him before the safety’s off, knocking him bodily into the study door and then through it, against the nearest bookcase. The glass shelving at eye-level shatters to the floor. Arthur snarls when Eames pins him to the shelf with his weight, and the gun goes off into the opposite wall.

“ _Stop_ ,” Eames whispers. “Arthur, _stop_. Please.”

“I can’t. You know that.”

Eames gets a grip on the barrel, slowly using it to bend Arthur’s hand back towards his forearm, leaning upward and then in until Arthur lets go a millisecond before his own wrist breaks. Eames kisses him. It’s desperate and rough and heated and, in so many aspects, it feels like good-bye.

Eames pushes off and Arthur stares at him, lips parted. Eames is holding the gun.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Eames is whispering now. Cheek wet. “But I don’t think I know – ”

  
\--

_“You think we don’t know how to get it out of you?” the man says. He bends down to meet your eye. “You’re not the only one who’s done this before. Believe me. We’ll get it out of you.”_

_You try to spit at him, but there’s only blood in your mouth._

_He taps your cheek. “We’ll get it out of you.”_

  
\--

[08]

“ – running a little bit late.”

Arthur puts a hand over the mouthpiece for a moment, closing his eyes. Takes a deep breath into the pit of his lungs. Some of his emotion must leak across the phone line because Eames picks up on it.

“Arthur, are you alright?”

“I’m fine, I’m driving. Can I call you back?”

There’s a brief pause. Arthur knows that Eames doesn’t buy it, but that’s not what’s important.

“Okay,” Eames says, eventually. “Keep yourself in one piece for me, there’s a dear.”

“Mmm.”

The moment Arthur hangs up he has to take a step backward to save his shoes. The first shot had caught Saito on the side of his neck; it hadn’t killed him, had only kicked up a red mist in the air and settled over the windowsill. A miscalculation on Arthur’s part. The second shot had blown through Saito’s skull, left a sickly, dark splatter of blood and brain matter and hair on the wall, and Saito had collapsed in a heap on the library’s hardwood. Without the dignity he’d always had in life.

Arthur takes a second step back, and then a third.

It takes him four tries to pocket his gun because his hand is shaking, as it never does. He recovers the bullet casings, one from underneath the desk and the other from the fringe of a woollen rug. He checks his watch. Kyoko and the two small daughters will arrive in half an hour, the girls with their school backpacks, chewing an afternoon snack of _mochi_. With them, the bodyguard. Arthur still has time. He sits down on the chair beside the door, leant forward with his elbows propped on his thighs and his hands hanging loose between his knees.

Saito’s body is twisted on its side, right arm splayed out and the other beneath him. His eyes are open, as is his mouth. When the time comes to leave, Arthur steps gingerly around the growing pool of blood to take a heavy overcoat off of Saito’s winged armchair, draping it over the upper half of the body. The dark wool fully covers Saito’s head. Arthur does it with the wife and the children in mind, a characteristic moment of tenderness.

  
\--

Back in the motel room, a sparse and coldly-lit place, Arthur sits on the bed and stares at his die.

Eames picks up on the third ring. He sounds hazy and distant, the way Eames always sounds hearing a business proposal for the very first time.

“Yes?”

“It’s me.”

“Where are you right now?”

Arthur hesitates, frowning. There’s a speck of blood on his cuff, shaped like a heart, and he picks at it with a fingernail. “Amsterdam.”

“Your passport left the Netherlands two days ago for Japan,” Eames says. It’s not an accusation.

“I’m in Kyoto,” Arthur revises, not apologising. “I have some things to check up on. Are you still in Uganda?”

“Nairobi,” says Eames.

Arthur runs a thumb across the edge of a gold cuff-link. These are the same ones Eames once undid with his teeth, followed by the intimate flick of a tongue on the vulnerable region of Arthur’s wrist. A sudden stab of inarticulate longing lodges itself in Arthur’s stomach.

“I can probably be in Amsterdam by the end of the week,” Eames tells him. “If I’m lucky.”

“Is he giving you trouble?” says Arthur.

“He’s on the run, but I’m getting there. Missed him at the airport by only an hour this morning. I’m going to give him some space though, for a couple of days, just enough to stop him from bolting again.”

“Alright.”

Eames falls silent for a moment; the line snaps and clicks. Arthur absently touches the cuff-link to his mouth.

“I can’t get onto Yusuf,” Eames says finally.

Arthur pauses. “Oh?”

“I’ve called all his numbers and he won’t answer on any of them. It’s never happened before.”

Arthur doesn’t speak until he’s schooled his voice, though even that takes some time. He shifts the phone a little. “He left Amsterdam two days ago to head back to Mombasa, said he had to check on something urgently. I don’t know what. Maybe there’s heat and he’s dived off the grid for a while. They’re making raids on the dream dens in Tanzania, it could’ve spread to Kenya.”

“I’m _in_ Kenya,” says Eames.

“Can you get to Mombasa to take a look?”

“Can’t leave Carter in case he makes a run for it,” says Eames, sounding taut. “At least not for a week.”

“I can fly down once I’m done here,” Arthur offers. “It should only be a few days. I’ve got a contact in Harare that I have to see, anyway. I could meet you in Zimbabwe and we could head back up to Amsterdam together, once you’re done with Carter.”

“Mmm,” says Eames.

“Is that a yes?” Arthur prods. There’s silence for a moment.

“I can’t get onto Ariadne either,” says Eames.

“No, she’s changed her number,” Arthur says, undoing the cuff-link and setting it aside. “The job’s high-profile. What do you need her for?”

“Can you contact her?”

Arthur lets out a small laugh. “I’m her point man. Of course I can contact her.”

Eames hums again, the single note light and short, noncommittal. Arthur feels something buzz in the bone of his sternum like a warning – he knows Eames well enough to understand that Eames is always nonchalant towards the information that most interests him, a quality that earns him every mark’s trust. The fact that this tone is being used on Arthur tells him that there is something wrong. Arthur knows what it is.

On the bedside, a digital clock beeps out the hour, startling Arthur into biting the inside of his cheek.

“She’s safe,” Arthur says. “I promise you, Eames. It’s a dangerous job but I’ve kept an eye out. That’s why you can’t contact her, I’ve got measures in place, we have buffers, all of us. Like that time we were on the Hornemann job. But if you want, I can probably get her to call you back sometime tomorrow.”

“No,” Eames says, quickly. For a moment, he actually sounds ashamed. “No, it’s fine, I just – I’m worried.”

“You shouldn’t worry about us.”

“I’m worried about _you_.”

“Eames, I once incapacitated you with a rolled-up GQ magazine.”

“So you keep reminding me,” Eames mumbles to that, but Arthur can tell that he’s somehow relieved. His voice has lost some of its metallic edge. “Do you miss me up there in Kyoto?”

“Like a hole in the head,” Arthur says, then softens. “Yes. I do.”

“I do too,” Eames says. “Miss you, that is.”

Arthur laughs quietly, kneading a wrinkle out of his covers. A comfortable silence falls over the line.

“Be careful,” Eames says unnecessarily, after at least five minutes. “I know you hate it when I tell you that, but it’s for my own peace of mind that I say it, not yours.”

“I promise,” says Arthur.

On the bedside table, a single gold cuff-link glints next to a Glock.

  
\--

Eames is getting shot. From somewhere in the shadows of the warehouse bullets are spitting sequentially out of a barrel, tearing into Eames’ abdomen from the back and emerging from the front of his stomach. Arthur is sitting on a roller chair, though he can’t seem to move it; with every shot more blood sprays onto Arthur’s shirt. Soon, Eames’ blood is on Arthur’s face. Even so, Arthur can see from his spot on the chair that Eames is not dead, impossibly – his eyes, still blinking, are fixed on Arthur’s with the detached, curious look of a bystander. A fragment of viscera lands on Arthur’s arm. He shouts _Stop, stop, stop, stop_ until he eventually shouts himself awake.

Later, he forgoes his usual routine of having breakfast before he takes a shower. He makes a bath. With the water punishingly hot he slides under the surface, submerges twice.

He watches the steam adhere to the windows. He imagines Eames, again, crouched next to the tub with his fingers dipping into the cooling water. Eames kissing a line up Arthur’s arm. Eames, with his grey eyes half-lidded and obscene lips parted around Arthur’s third knuckle, trailing a hand rough with calluses over the outline of Arthur’s hip, up the side of his ribs, across over a nipple, thumbing the droplets out of the pool made by the winging of Arthur’s collarbone. Arthur fucks his own hand, thinking of Eames fucking him; in the tub perhaps, Arthur’s hands scrabbling for purchase on slick tiles, Eames’ wet kisses up and over his throat. On the floor, Arthur riding Eames into the carpet. Against the bookshelf, Arthur’s ankles locked around Eames’ hips. Arthur presses his face into the meat of his shoulder and grits his teeth, hips pumping, eyes squeezed shut, and when he comes his mind throws up an image of Eames with bullets tearing his body apart and the sound that rips from Arthur’s throat is part residual pleasure, part blinding, all-consuming fear. The terror stays long after the pleasure is gone. Arthur finds himself shivering, as if the water is cold, and he drags himself out to pull the plug.

Over breakfast, he purchases himself a ticket to Mombasa with the passport that Eames has been tracking so far. With a second passport, one that Eames hasn’t seen before, he books a flight to LA to visit Cobb.

  
\--

In the two years that Cobb has left the business, he’s done well for himself. The porch out the front of his house – which had always been slightly lopsided due to sinking soil – has been straightened, not perfectly, but proudly by hand. The new layer of paint is thicker in some spots. The gutters have all been repainted, too.

Arthur hesitates for two days, dallying around the neighbourhood and telling himself that the lull is necessary for research. Sometimes, when he passes the backyard fence, he can hear James and Phillipa laughing at something, occasionally crying over stolen toys. He tells himself not to look at them, because he’s half-afraid that a glance at their faces would derail everything; but on the second day he can’t prevent a peek. Phillipa, with pink pom poms tied to her bicycle handles, is doing wobbly circuits around the backyard while Cobb hovers nervously half a metre behind.

“Are you sure you don’t want the training wheels?” Cobb is saying, both hands up as if ready to catch her.

“ _Dad_ ,” says Phillipa.

“Just asking,” says Cobb. “James, don’t run in front of your sister, it’s dangerous.”

“I’m going at a _crawl_ ,” Phillipa complains. “Can’t you push me, Dad?”

Cobb pitches forward immediately, as if expecting Phillipa to keel off her bicycle with the tail-end of her question. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. Not too quickly, now. Watch that potted plant! James, don’t run in front!”

On the other side of the fence, Arthur turns around to brace his back against the palings. He takes a cigarette from the pack inside of his jacket but doesn’t light it. The sun drenches the cracks in the sidewalk.

In the afternoon, Eames sends him a text message.

_what are you doing in Los Angeles?_

Arthur stares at it, sitting on a park bench two streets from the corner that holds Cobb’s house, thumb tracing over the screen. The same cigarette is still unlit in his mouth; he’s patted all his pockets but he’s forgotten a lighter. He must have left it in the hotel room.

Some time ago, Mal had leant across on the porch and lit his cigarette for him, then stolen it.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he’d said, but teasingly. “That’s bad for the baby.”

“Just one more,” she’d said, taking a very deep puff before passing it back grudgingly. “There. Are you happy now? You’re as bad as Dom.”

“Dom loves you.”

“Do _you_ love me?” she’d asked playfully. “Because if you do, you can give me the cigarette back – ”

“You’re such a mess, Mal,” he’d said. But he _had_ given it back. He’d watched the surprise flutter over her face, open it up as easily as a child’s, and known then that she was perfectly right. He did love her.

She took the cigarette out of his fingers.

“And you’re such a hypocrite, Arthur,” she’d countered back.

“I’m a realist. The moment I’m out of sight you’ll smoke the pack of Pall Malls you have under your bed.”

She’d laughed, delighted. “You know about that? But of course you do. You know me better than Dom.”

“Dom’s an idealist,” he’d said. “Though I’d much prefer it if you proved me wrong and _didn’t_ smoke them. You know what the doctor said.”

“That I’m not meant to be having this baby,” she’d said, surprising them both by saying it out aloud.

Arthur had fallen silent, looking out from the wide porch steps to the garden where some wilted gardenias slouched sulkily. Cobb had forgotten to water them again. Arthur had felt a strange surge of fatality at the entire scene, a silky shiver like someone walking over his grave.

“If anything happens to me because of the baby,” Mal had said eventually, voice sombre at last, “you’ll take care of Dom and Phillipa, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Promise it.”

He’d looked across at her, at the genuine fear in her velvet-blue eyes. He’d promised, but at the very same time he’d wondered if he’d ever feel the same sort of fear for anyone – not even fear of the palpable, but of the could-be, the might-be, the hypothetical. There were very few true definitions of love and Arthur had learnt only snatches of them. And yet here Arthur is, and here Mal could have been, if she hadn’t have been in love with Cobb; and between his love for Mal and his love for Eames, Arthur knows exactly which one of the two he’d choose.

  
\--

Arthur doesn’t reply to Eames’ text message, but by early evening, Eames has sent him another one. Arthur is lingering around his hotel room, trying to put off what he’s going to do tomorrow morning when Cobb returns from taking his kids to school. His phone buzzes, clatters on the wood of his hotel desk.

_why_

Arthur feels a weight in his throat when he sees it. He puts the phone back down.

By six p.m. Eames has tried to call Arthur eleven times, and Arthur doesn’t pick up. He understands what it means and, with the clinical foresight he has, decides not to wait for tomorrow. He fetches the bulletproof vest from his suitcase. He strips out of his waistcoat and his blue-striped shirt, buttons both back up over the vest.

_call me_

_I’m in the middle of a job right now, Eames._

_why are you in la_

_Lead on Ebertson why is something wrong?_

Eames doesn’t answer and Arthur is quietly relieved. Instinct tells him to move fast and he revises his plan as he heads for the car, the Glock in a holster at his back, the key turning with a smooth _click-hitch_ to fire the engine. Arthur doesn’t particularly like last-minute plans but there’s an urgency that’s been with him the entire past week, a baseline thrum at a point in his skull, relentless. A sense of inertia that knocks his sternum. Like stepping off of a high-rise building and knowing that there’s only acceleration left, every moment jammed in beside the last as if Arthur truly believes that if it happens fast, and in quick succession, it never happened at all. Arthur isn’t the type for self-deception but momentum can blur things. He’s killed before.

Eames calls again and Arthur nudges the car to eighty. He doesn’t pick up. He peels his car off the highway.

Once outside Cobb’s house, Arthur parks in the driveway and narrowly avoids running over some stuffed toys. For a moment Arthur can’t get out of the car, just sits with his seatbelt still done up, the gun digging into the small of his back.

He wants a smoke, but it feels dishonourable. He doesn’t want to cheapen what he’s about to do.

_arthur please just 5 mins need to talk to you_

Arthur locks the phone inside his glove box.

When he finally eases himself out of the car the night air, cool and fresh with the scent of wet grass, sinks into his throat and the pit of his lungs. There’s the sound of shrill voices – James and Phillipa. Arthur holds himself steady and doesn’t turn back. The porch groans a little when Arthur mounts it, and before he rings Cobb’s old-fashioned doorbell – which is dusty brass and is an actual _bell_ – he checks the set of his jacket, tugging it down to more fully cover up the line of his gun.

His fingers ghost the tongue of the bell, and then momentum catches him and he rattles it.

Arthur can hear Cobb now, the low murmur of his voice as he tries to soothe his children out of their argument. When no-one comes to answer the door, Arthur rattles the bell again.

“Cobb?” he calls through the door. “You in?”

“Who is it,” Cobb yells from inside, still far away. He sounds angry.

“It’s Arthur.”

Footsteps in the hallway beyond, not a child’s. Cobb’s coming to open the door. Arthur skates his palm against the wood of the doorjamb, flicks a glance over his shoulder. The night is blank.

Arthur feels a terrible sense of dread, so much so that it bleeds over into despair.

“Cobb,” Arthur says. He’s known Cobb for ten years. “I know it’s getting a bit late and all, but I need to – ”

  
\--

_Somewhere, between the muzzy hours, you understand that they’re not going to let you sleep. They beat you. You have several broken ribs. You may have punctured something, you’re not sure what, since when you piss – chair knocked back, arms crushed beneath, back flat on the floor and legs tied to the chair – there’s a tint of red where it soils your trousers. You feel your urine creeping up beside your hair._

_You think: Is this the best you’ve got. Is this the only thing you can do to me._

_With the dead fluorescents knifing into your eyes you grit your teeth, you look upward. You bite back a laugh._

  
\--

[07]

“ – the controversial ZeroGen project was scrapped by the Australian government yesterday. Fischer, who was heavily involved in the project’s development of a widely-trumpeted $4.3 billion clean coal power plant, only two years ago dissolved the Fischer-Morrow energy conglomerate left to him by his father, the late Maurice Fischer. The young CEO of ZeroGen had apparently failed to deliver on a cutting-edge clean coal technology that Australian taxpayers had paid almost $150 million for – ”

Arthur grabs up the remote and turns the TV off.

The view from the hotel is uninspiring. From another aspect, it might have shown the meandering green of the canal next to it, a tiny stone bridge. A city that had once inspired Rembrandt. Instead, all it shows is the dull and musty brick of an apartment block, the unattractive bulge of air-conditioning units beside half-open windows, the rain-heavy air. Somewhere along the horizon a storm is building, crackling across the night sky.

With the TV off, the entire room is silent except for the faint tick of Arthur’s wristwatch on the bedside drawer. Arthur finishes towelling his hair in the bathroom, brushes his teeth. He doesn’t think about Fischer.

He thinks about Eames and draws the curtains shut. He pulls the PASIV case out from the hotel safe.

  
\--

Arthur is lying in the sand.

It’s a windy day and the gilt-edged feel of the breeze on his neck carries with it the sharp, coarse tang of stray sand grains, prickling up the entire right side of his body. The sky above him is tented wide and blue. He slants a hand across his eyes, shielding himself from the sun.

Eames is lying beside him, but upside-down so that his body points away though his head is level. Arthur can feel him there without even having to take a look.

“You’re going to burn,” Eames says, voice lazy with sleep.

Arthur tilts his face over. Eames has his hands folded on his chest, eyes closed, nose turning slightly pink.

“I won’t be here long enough to feel it,” says Arthur. “ _You_ will be, though. Didn’t you put any zinc on your face?”

Eames cracks a single eye open. “Must have slipped my mind.”

“Huh,” Arthur says. “Hold still for me, then.”

Eames does while Arthur locates the tube of zinc, half-buried in the sand beside his thigh. Arthur notices that he’s wearing a pair of black swimmers. Eames is wearing a flamboyant orange-and-red check. Eames is right – Arthur’s thighs have turned a tiny bit pink, but Arthur ignores them in favour of uncapping the tube and propping himself up gingerly on his left elbow. His shadow screens Eames’ face from the sun.

“If you fidget there won’t be any sex tonight,” Arthur says, squeezing a generous amount of zinc onto his fingertips.

“Liar,” Eames says. “You know you can’t resist me.”

“Since you’re as red as a hard-boiled prawn,” Arthur says.

Arthur strokes the zinc gently down the bridge of Eames’ nose; Eames immediately tips his entire head back to mouth at the base of Arthur’s wrist.

“I’ve missed you,” says Eames.

Arthur laughs a little. “I haven’t gone anywhere. Now hold still, for Christ’s sake.”

To his surprise, Eames does, going slack underneath him with his eyes half-mast. Arthur pretends not to notice how Eames tracks his mouth almost indecently, eyes following every movement that Arthur makes.

“Fischer killed himself,” Arthur says after a while, carefully smoothing his thumb over Eames’ cheek.

“And there goes our romantic moment,” sighs Eames. “Really, Arthur.”

“You’re my own subconscious,” Arthur says with a smile. “I feel like I can talk to you. We seem to have so much in common.”

Eames’ hand has inched onto Arthur’s hip. “You want to talk? I’ve brought you off just by talking, before.”

“I know.”

The sun runs heatedly along Arthur’s shoulders and he leans down to rub the zinc in evenly. At a distance of fifteen centimetres or so, Arthur can feel Eames’ breath tickle over his lips, smell the salt on his neck from an earlier swim.

For a moment, Arthur almost forgets himself.

“Now would be an excellent time to kiss me,” says Eames, sounding hopeful and breaking Arthur’s concentration. “Or fuck me into the sand, I’m not particularly picky. Either would be received quite happily.”

“Do you think I could have stopped it?” Arthur says.

“What, Fischer?”

“Yes.”

“Inception is irreversible, Arthur, you know that.” Eames’ thumb swipes absently over the curve of Arthur’s hipbone, before dipping underneath the swimsuit. “And you monitored him for a year.”

“He hadn’t seemed unstable – ”

“See, you’re making an assumption, right there,” Eames cuts in. “You’re assuming that he had to be mentally unstable. That’s not always the case. You can be sane and still do terrible things, or stupid things, or things that don’t make sense. Insanity is the exception, it’s not the rule. I don’t think Fischer was insane.”

“We messed around in his mind, Eames. It’s possible.”

“So what if it is? So the bugger was insane, and you didn’t pick it up. Or say you _did_ pick it up. You still couldn’t have done anything.”

Arthur raises a brow, palm against the line of Eames’ jaw. Eames turns his face to lean into it.

“You don’t seem to place much value on my abilities,” Arthur says.

Eames’ eyes turn soft. “Oh, it isn’t that, Arthur. You just have a habit of forgetting your own limits sometimes.”

“Is that why I need you?”

“It’s why anyone ever needs anyone else,” Eames says, jauntily enough, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. Arthur laughs, thumb travelling over Eames’ brow-bone and nudging into his hairline.

“Funny, that,” Arthur says. “I could’ve sworn I just kept you around for the sex.”

“If you do, you don’t pay me nearly enough,” says Eames.

“How much do I owe you?”

Eames tips his head, pretending to think. “You owe me several excruciatingly good blowjobs, for a start. And a really thorough shag. Several really thorough shags. Actually, just take everything that’s on the proverbial menu and multiply by four – that’ll about do it, I reckon.”

“You’re selling yourself pretty cheap,” Arthur says, quietly, bending to brush his lips lightly over Eames’. The ease with which Eames opens up to him – without a pause for consideration, an almost autonomic response – is what ultimately sends the shiver down Arthur’s spine, the rich twist of pleasure unravelling itself in knots and ribbons within Arthur’s stomach. With a jolt he thinks he’ll never grow tired of this, of Eames with all his slipperiness and his tendency to play his cards close to the chest overriding all of his better instincts, trusting Arthur, letting Arthur set the pace. It doesn’t always happen; more often Eames is on top, and Eames is the type to fight for every inch he can get. It’s not that Arthur has anything against that – it’s simply that when Eames is loose and surprisingly pliant, Arthur realises how very precious what they have truly is. Honed, and so necessary, so tuned to each other in the way a pendulum is tuned to gravity.

“You’re thinking,” Eames interrupts after some time. Arthur blinks in to the sight of Eames, the sand grains stuck to the zinc on his cheek, that lush mouth bitten to an irresistible red.

“You’re going to get sand-burn,” Arthur reminds him, licking lightly at the corner of Eames’ mouth.

Eames smiles before deepening the kiss properly. Arthur bites back a low groan far too late and it emerges, thrums in between their two bodies until Arthur can almost feel it from his palms on Eames’ chest. Eames’ skin is sticky from sweat and sea-salt; he bucks up as Arthur settles between his thighs, one hand tangled in the hair of Arthur’s nape and the other roaming over Arthur’s back. His palm catches the thin layer of sand stuck there and presses it into Arthur’s skin.

The sharp grate of pain makes Arthur arch inward, gasping out as their hips align perfectly.

“Do your worst,” Eames murmurs into Arthur’s mouth, the challenge undeniably there. He licks at Arthur’s teeth. Arthur pulls back a little.

“Just so long as you don’t regret saying that later,” says Arthur, a tad breathless.

Eames chuckles. “That’s up to you, though, isn’t it?”

With the sand there the fucking is slow and careful, Arthur braced on his arms, Eames’ thighs clenched around his hips. Everything is hot – the sun reflecting off of the beach, Eames’ skin, the tight clutch of him around Arthur’s cock – at that temperature just above comfortable, just enough to keep Arthur deliciously on edge. When he comes Eames grabs at his jaw, tilts him up to bite into his mouth before Eames is shuddering and coming as well, the tendons starting in his neck, the new heat in between their stomachs.

_Fuck, I’d do anything_ , Arthur thinks, surprising himself with the force of it. _Anything._

  
\--

In Kyoto, Arthur finds a downtrodden motel so far from what he usually goes for that it soothes him. The temporary feel of it – the peeling wallpaper, the scuffed wooden furniture – reminds him of Eames.

That afternoon, while Arthur is still a little jetlagged, he comes back from buying groceries to find that his hotel safe is wide open. It’s been professionally done; the first thing Arthur checks any time he gets a hotel room is the quality of the safe, and this one had met his standards. The PASIV is gone. The cash in Euros and dollars and yen is still there in their neat stacks, rubber-banded, untouched.

Arthur knows a message when it slaps him in the face. He changes motels. He doesn’t track down the PASIV.

He calls Saito.

On the third day, a black-tinted limousine pulls up outside of Arthur’s motel.

“I’m sorry to hear about your equipment,” says Saito, when Arthur climbs into the leather seat next to him. Saito’s eyes are warm, his smile genuine. “It is very good to see you again, Arthur, but I’m not sure that I can help you in this matter.”

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that,” Arthur notes, reaching for his seatbelt.

Saito laughs and the lines around his eyes deepen slightly.

“Things have changed,” he admits. “Would you like a drink? It’s a short distance to my home, but there’s time for a glass of champagne, if you’d like it.”

“No, I’m alright.”

Saito looks different to the man whom Arthur had once compiled intel on in preparation for the Cobol job. He is still dressed impeccably, with the same sense of inherited power that had made him so dangerous two years ago; but where before Saito had been all razor-sharp edges, politely veiled but still near enough to be sensed, now he is blunter, his edges sanded down a little. There is an age in his eyes that isn’t there in his face. Arthur wonders if it’s because of his time spent in Limbo – there’s a matching look in Cobb’s eyes that Arthur has recognised for years – or if it’s because of the heart attack nine months ago, in the VIP lounge of Milan’s Malpensa Airport.

“You too have changed,” Saito says after a moment. “You have found a purpose.”

“I’ve been working some jobs,” Arthur says, smiling back, smoothing out a crease in his trouser leg. “I’m working one now in Amsterdam.”

“With Mr Eames?”

“Not yet. He’s held up in Uganda.” Arthur can’t stopper the sudden rush of want low in his belly, the way he has to blink in order to clear his vision. “He – I think he’ll be finished by the end of the week.”

Saito watches him closely as the car makes a turn. “I see. And how is Mr Cobb?”

They make small-talk for the short duration of the drive, the neat streets of Kyoto peeling away behind them. Arthur finds it easy to sit still in Saito’s presence, as if the man’s equilibrium is diffusible.

Arthur has seen pictures of Saito’s house in his research: two stories, modest, all elegant lines where steel and glass meet dark-grained wood, a tasteful mix between East and West. The garden behind the black gate is lush and intricate. Arthur knows that there are several rock-gardens, small wooden bridges behind the house, every aspect of it planned meticulously and with the same subtle restraint that characterises its owner.

“Don’t park in, Hideki,” Saito says, leaning forward. “Kyoko will be going out for the girls.”

Obediently, the driver pulls them up outside the house, the gates sliding shut behind them soundlessly.

“I don’t think you have met my daughters,” says Saito as they make their way together into the house. “Tokiwa and Kaoru. They are eight and six. If you’d like, you can see them when they return from school.”

Arthur resists the urge to run his fingers over the wooden banister of the stairs. “I’d like that.”

“Here we are. My study is just to the left.”

The room is clean-smelling. There are two oak bookshelves, one filled with Japanese books and the other with ones in English. A wide window – Arthur recognises bullet-proof glass – gives a quiet view of the garden below.

“Sit, please.” Saito gestures at a leather armchair. “Whiskey?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“I heard about Fischer,” Saito says, the clear light from the window passing through the decanter in his fingers. A rich amber colour sprays across his desktop. “It is a pity. He was worthy of great respect.”

Arthur can see that he means it. That age, again, in his eyes.

“I hadn’t seen it coming,” Arthur says.

“Can anyone see an idea as it forms inside a man’s head?” Saito smiles sadly, passing a glass to Arthur with the slightest bow. “But you are an expert. Perhaps it is possible, now.”

“You haven’t kept up with the field?”

“I am semi-retired. Since Milan – I’m sure you know of Milan already, yes? – I have not been deeply involved in the corporation. I have been spending more time with my family.” Saito settles himself on the edge of his desk, tilting his glass. A wistful look passes over his face. “Kaoru lost another tooth just yesterday.”

Arthur watches him, waiting. A clock ticks steadily from the opposite wall.

“I understood it, returning with Mr Cobb from Limbo – I was an old man there, I’d created palaces. There were halls filled with lamps shaped like flowers and birds. There were gardens, and a teahouse underneath a cherry tree. There were mazes of _shoji_ lit by floating candles in a moat, but I never once saw my children or my wife. It was very beautiful, but beauty is a desolate thing when a man views it alone.”

“I – Cobb never told me what happened down there,” Arthur says.

Saito pauses, eyes thoughtful. He sets his glass down. “He is retired now, yes?”

“He hasn’t touched a PASIV since. At least, not to my knowledge.”

“Which is veritable,” Saito says, the clear brown of his eyes turning humorous for a second. He nods. “Mr Cobb is wiser than me in many aspects. I am only just beginning to understand him.”

Arthur thinks of Cobb, his scrunched-up form bent over a mug, squinting down at the nutritional information on a tin of Ovaltine while James and Phillipa tug eagerly on his sweatpants, clamouring.

Arthur can’t imagine leaving dreaming for anything.

He loves Eames because Eames would never _make_ him leave.

“It is harder,” Saito says quietly, as if reading his mind, “to change the direction of a moving object, or to stop it, than to let it continue on its way. It is a law of physics, and it is a law of life. But sometimes, an object’s direction needs to be changed; how is it that we do so?”

Arthur says nothing.

“I have sent Hideki away with Kyoko; I have no other bodyguard inside the house. I am alone, and unarmed, whilst you are not. I have given you my greatest token of faith.” Saito pushes himself up off the desk and moves silently to the window. The pale light filters softly over his face. “You may shoot me, as you did Ariadne, and as you did Yusuf – ”

“I didn’t shoot Ariadne,” Arthur says, as if something inside him feels the difference has great importance.

Saito makes an apologetic gesture. “I am sorry. My sources are not always accurate. But in any case, she is dead, and I am powerless to stop you. I would not make your choice. I could’ve moved to the other side of the world and you still would have found me, as you’ve found me today. I know your talents. I am not going to ask you why.”

“Why did you send your bodyguard away,” Arthur says.

“You would not hurt my wife or my children,” Saito says, turning his head to look back. “You are not such a man.”

Arthur feels something sick build within his chest. “I am not.”

There is a pause. Saito visibly relaxes, turning back to peer out across the lawn. A few trees spread their canopies over the grass and a couple of jewel-green man-made hills.

“I dreamt once that I stood there with my family,” says Saito, as if to himself. “Everything has changed.”

Arthur reaches for the Glock nestled in his back holster with the realisation that, if he is to carry this through, he needs to shoot before Saito turns to look at him. His first shot is too hurried and slams into Saito’s neck. The second is on par – entering just above Saito’s right ear, before the man has even had time to react.

Arthur’s phone goes off, and he barely hears it above the hot rushing of blood in his ears.

When he fumbles it out, his eyes feel blind. For the first time in years he answers without checking caller ID.

“Yes?”

“Love, it’s me,” comes Eames’ voice. It sounds distant, alien. “I’m sorry, but I’m – ”

  
\--

_A man can swallow a litre of blood, you think, so you keep swallowing. It’s difficult to see out of your right eye. You have time in between ferocious bouts of violence and you think about how you are going to die. It’s an indulgence, really. Your mind spins out reels. On your back with your wrists and your ankles slippery, the blood clogging up the back of your throat. You swallow. You’re in the right position to float out to sea. You won’t see it, of course, but your body might, drifting out on the grimy river water and rubbish with your smashed face upturned to the sun and the wind._

\--

[06]

“ – tried it, but it never worked. Stupid gits. Makes sense why they can’t, if you think about it.”

Arthur makes a left turn as Yusuf finishes up his fried rice, humming along to some elusive Bollywood tune.

“Does it depend on the level that the idea is planted?” Arthur asks. Yusuf makes a snorting sound. “Some teams have claimed to plant without even touching third.”

“Second level, third level, it’s all the same,” Yusuf insists. “Arthur, you’ve just said it – you _plant_ an idea. Like a seed. It goes into the fertile soil of a mind, and then it sprouts, it branches. It roots itself. Any single idea is never completely single, it’s connected to an entire matrix of other ideas. Trying to erase an idea that’s already been planted is like trying to uproot a two-hundred year old tree by its leaves.”

“There are other ways to uproot two-hundred year old trees,” Arthur says.

Yusuf waves him off. “It’s impossible to get all the roots out. You remove the trunk and all that, and it just grows right back. The human mind is complex.”

“Ideas are lost in amnesia,” Arthur points out.

“En masse,” Yusuf says. “It’s nothing selective. Like using a jackhammer for open heart surgery.”

“So we have to get the plant right on the very first go.”

“That’s the idea.”

Arthur snorts at the weak pun, shaking his head. “That was terrible.”

“I stole it from Eames,” Yusuf says, unapologetic. “Speaking of which – is he done with the Carter business? I’ve got a couple of experiments to run past him.”

“You heard about Carter?” Arthur says, surprised, pulling up at a light.

“I’m not an invalid. And just because I hunker down in a dream den all day doesn’t mean I’m a hermit.” Yusuf grins at him. “He sold you out, didn’t he? In exchange for an extension on his measly life.”

“Which is going to be called in by the end of the week.”

“What an idiot,” Yusuf says, with great emphasis. He rubs his hands together with some measure of glee. “Loyalty is the best protection, nowadays. It never takes long to hunt down a traitor, not with everyone looking to root him out.”

“No-one’s looking very hard,” Arthur says, “except Eames.”

“Oh, but they won’t take any jobs with him. His cash flow has to run out sooner or later. Desperate men are the easiest to catch,” Yusuf says. He winds down the window. “Ariadne’s here, yes?”

Arthur slants him a look but Yusuf is open and easy, closing his eyes as the breeze hits him across the brow. 

“She’s here,” Arthur says.

“I feel like pizza,” says Yusuf. “With real olives, not that usual tasteless crap. You know that Ariadne is allergic to anchovies? Poor thing.”

Arthur smiles despite himself.

“I’m going to ask her this time, you know,” Yusuf says, suddenly sounding very determined. Arthur’s smile slips a bit. “Nothing fancy, just a nice little pizzeria – or is that dangerous? There could be traces of anchovies. Chinese, maybe. They don’t serve anchovies, do they?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“She’s graduating next year.”

“I hope you’ve given as much thought to the job as you have to setting up a first date with Ariadne,” Arthur says. Yusuf laughs, fiddles with the air-conditioning. “You haven’t, have you.”

“You’ve such unrealistic expectations of me.”

“Is that what they call competence nowadays?”

“Oh, don’t start that with me. I’ve seen you with Eames.”

The words are playful but instantly a cold weight settles into Arthur’s chest. Almost without thinking he checks the rear-view mirror, but the action is reflexive and there’s nothing there. 

Arthur’s perceptive enough to recognise that what he and Eames have is precarious. Once, at the beginning, it was a major deterrent, the reason why Arthur had always kept to a continent halfway around the world, despite inconvenience and Cobb’s blatant questioning. Arthur is a man who shows restraint by placing himself out of temptation’s way. He’d skirted jobs with Eames not because he’d disliked Eames, but because with any contact his will was easy to crumble, he was liable to let his heart overrule his head. It was the reason why he’d traipsed around with Cobb after Mal had jumped. It was the reason why he did most things. He knew that, despite what most people believed at first glance, of the two of them Eames had the greater self-control; and Arthur had proved it halfway through the Fischer job when he’d finally felt his floodgates burst, when he’d finally cornered Eames in the warehouse washroom and slid to his knees on the dirty tile.

In their business, every sword is double-edged. Arthur works with Eames because they fit together like cogs; Arthur fucks with Eames for the very same reason. Arthur builds the mazes and Eames improvises, brings in trapdoors and the last-minute, life-saving short-cuts. But in the same breath, Arthur knows that Eames is the only way through the towers and barbed wire of Arthur’s defences, the only way to get truly beneath Arthur’s skin. The weak fault-line. The vulnerable pressure point.

Given a second chance, would he do all this again? If second chances exist.

He checks the rear-view again.

“ – just a bit more static than usual,” Yusuf is saying. “The stability comes at a price. It’ll be more difficult to alter things.”

“Shouldn’t have to, if Ariadne does her job properly,” Arthur says, slotting neatly back into the moment.

“She’ll do better,” Yusuf says confidently.

For a second, Arthur has the ludicrous thought that even if he stomps full-heartedly now on the brakes, the car will keep moving, and he along with it.

“You’ve wanted this for a very long time, haven’t you,” Arthur says, looking across. “Since the Fischer job.”

Yusuf lets out a laugh, his eyes careless and happy. “Everyone has a dream, Arthur. Everyone.”

\--

There is a splatter of blood at Arthur’s hairline, where the wet tissue of the warehouse hadn’t reached. Arthur wipes at it while facing his hotel mirror. He retches emptily, once. Then he takes a shower.

The hot water beats a tattoo against his nape. A month ago, on Arthur’s thirty-first birthday, Eames had slipped in while Arthur was in the middle of shampooing his hair. In the early morning, with the blood rinsing off of his body from a job that had gone wrong just the night before, the faint tremble of light from the frosted window. Arthur had sensed Eames there sooner than he had actually seen him.

“Here,” Eames had said, quietly. “Let me get that.”

Eames’ fingertips gently working over Arthur’s scalp. The hot closeness of him, the way every inch between his skin and Arthur’s had nudged right at the core of Arthur’s awareness; the way how, without being in any way sexual, that single moment had made Arthur feel the closest to another human being as he’d ever been, as he possibly ever would be.

When Arthur finally comes out of the shower, Yusuf’s vials and capped tubes are lined up on the table. Somnacin, perhaps, and other things; Yusuf has a mysterious labelling system that involves coloured dots and haphazard felt-pen squiggling. Arthur is not sure why he brought them with him from the warehouse – it’s not likely that he’ll ever get to use their contents – but the sight of them knocked to the concrete floor by Yusuf’s sprawling body had been nauseating. It had felt like an insult to leave them there.

On the television, the evening news is on. 

“ – that Robert Fischer was found dead in his Sydney apartment early this morning, having apparently overdosed on sleeping pills. This terrible development comes immediately after – ”

\--

_They come for you after some time. You expect to be hurt. You don’t expect them to right your chair._

_The man crouches so that you and he are level. He is careful to avoid the blood and urine on the floor. He has an old-fashioned key dangling from his right hand, casually, like it’s there by accident. It takes you almost three seconds to focus on it; your right eye is steadily swelling itself shut._

_“Do you know what this is, Arthur?” the man says. He brings the key up, turns it in his fingers. “Do you?”_

\--

[05]

“ – going on?”

Ariadne’s voice is tinny from across the gap. The entire building is shaking underneath Arthur’s feet, a great shuddering that seems almost to start from several kilometres beneath the ground, working its way up the levels of steel and concrete. In the distance there’s a sound like the clapping of thunder. Arthur can feel it knock straight to the heart of his bones.

“Arthur?” Ariadne is yelling. Her face is pale and terrified.

_You’re the dreamer_ , Arthur wants to shout back. _This is_ your _world. What are you doing to it?_

From his vantage point, Arthur can make out great plumes of dust erupting all around the two of them in a circle, with him as the origin. Ariadne is right – it’s the dust from collapsing buildings. Arthur can see them both, at the centre of a maze of rooftops, every building connected by narrow walkways to the next. At the edges of the circular maze, buildings crumple one against the other like an infinite number of falling dominoes. They all seem to crumple at a uniform rate; the circle grows smaller slowly at first, shrinking in, then faster by increments, building up momentum, the spewing rubble eating up avenues like snakes converging on a common point. The air is thick now with a smoky haze, as if the sky itself is beginning to tear. It could be the end of a world, or it could be the beginning of another one, new and terrible. It could very easily be both.

In that moment, with the dream imploding on itself like the crush of the universe into a ball, Arthur suddenly realises what it all means.

What it is that he, finally, has to do.

The sky cracks right across like an eggshell breaking, a flash of lightning filling up the yawning gap. In the sudden, bleached white, Arthur can see that Ariadne has gone to all fours to keep her balance. She looks vulnerable, child-like. Her measly twenty-four years.

“Arthur, it’s not me, I’m not doing anything, I swear – ”

“Stay,” Arthur shouts across. “Stay where you are.”

“What are you doing? No, don’t you leave me here – ”

“I’m going up for a second.” 

Arthur concentrates and the weight of the Glock falls into his palm. He closes his hand around the grip, feels the familiar resistance of the trigger.

Ariadne pries herself to her feet. “No, wait! Take me up with you!”

“I’ll be back in a moment. Stay right there.”

In the second before Arthur shoots himself in the head he catches the expression on Ariadne’s face. It’s hard to see clearly through the growing smoke but the fear starts right out of her, sharp like a blow.

\--

Arthur goes for his gun when he jerks awake. The movement almost topples the PASIV. Within moments Arthur has ripped off the medical tape and the canella, and he’s sitting upright, Glock in hand.

He knows that Ariadne is not going to wake. The moment Arthur leaves the dream the destruction will stop like snuffing a fuse; the dust will hover and eventually clear, the inward plummeting of the skyscrapers pulling up to a clean and abrupt standstill. From space, if there is a space in dreams, Ariadne would seem to be the centre of a giant steel-and-concrete disc, the edges crisply and precisely defined, falling away to an endless stretch of ruin beyond. Just one tiny point of reference in a chaotic place.

Arthur trains the Glock’s sight at Ariadne’s forehead.

Her eyelids are still, no movement beneath them. Her breath even. A tiny wisp of hair has escaped from behind her ear, tickling over her cheek with each inhale and exhale. The open, trusting expanse of her throat is uncovered by her usual scarf, milky white.

Arthur lowers the gun in increments. It feels heavy, heavier than Arthur is used to, and he sets it down on the concrete of the warehouse floor. 

The PASIV is hissing with its usual rhythm, like an artificial ventilator. As prepared as Arthur always is, and as precisely as he calculates each Somnacin dose by dream-time and the dreamer’s weight, there are still spare vials of Somnacin tucked in a compartment of the case at all times. Arthur eyes them for a moment. When he pulls himself up a thin bead of blood trickles down his wrist from where the needle left it, weaves across his palm and down his index finger.

He adds three full vials of Somnacin to the machine. It’s more than they typically use in a month.

When Ariadne’s breathing begins to slow, Arthur adds another vial. It won’t reach her in time but Arthur needs the belief that it will speed things up. Death within seconds up above can drag out to minutes within a dream.

No-one wants to suffocate for half an hour, slowly, with a dead world sprawled out all around them.

Arthur’s blood has turned the metal of the case slippery.

In the last moments, Ariadne’s breath makes a hitch and her eyelids flutter briefly, fall half-open. Arthur stares but she doesn’t breathe again. Her eyes are blank. Her lips are parted slightly. Immediately a certain air descends around her, the intangible distinction between dead and asleep, a gut feeling within the human heart. Arthur’s seen it before, just not like this.

After at least five minutes Arthur finally moves to her side. He takes the needle, carefully, out of her wrist. And then he sweeps his hand gently down her face to close her eyes, leaving a smear of blood behind.

\--

Arthur is at the bottom of a well. It is small, claustrophobic, pressing in on all sides and pitch-black. The dirt underneath Arthur’s thighs is dry, crumbling easily between his fingers.

Eames is there with him.

Arthur can feel Eames’ back propped against his own. Suddenly, with this realisation, Arthur can smell him too – the sharp spice of lime, the scent of wet leaves and crushed pine needles, a tiny hint of sweat.

“Have you broken anything?” Arthur says.

“Not that I know of,” Eames answers, voice echoing slightly on the stone around them. “You?”

“No.”

Eames shifts his back out of alignment and Arthur scoots backward, stretching his legs. Eames’ shoulder brushes against his own as they shuffle past each other. When Arthur tips his head up he can just make out a neat little circle of light, about the size of a palm, out of reach over them. Some of the light spills into the well, ending a metre or so from the crusted rim.

Eames’ hand slides hesitantly over Arthur’s lower leg, feeling its way gradually to Arthur’s knee.

“I wouldn’t lie about a broken leg,” Arthur says, and Eames huffs a soft laugh. “I’m serious.”

“You’ve lied about worse things. Like bullet-wounds.”

Arthur nudges Eames’ hip with his foot. Somehow, the question of how they got here – falling down from at least fifteen metres – without any broken bones doesn’t register. In the scope of things, it feels unimportant.

“We’re dreaming, aren’t we?”

“No, _you’re_ dreaming.” The warmth of Eames’ palm seeps through Arthur’s trousers, steady and thrumming with some hidden energy. “I’m just along for the ride.”

“Not a very thrilling ride, though, stuck in here,” Arthur notes.

“You’ve no-one to blame for that but yourself,” Eames says cheerily. His fingers stroke the underside of Arthur’s knee. “Though we can make a half-arsed attempt to get out, if you’d like. Stand on my shoulders and all of that.”

Arthur eyes the patch of black where Eames is supposedly sitting. “I’m heavier than I look.”

“You look like an eighteen year old.”

“I’m not sure age correlates entirely with weight.”

“Arthur,” Eames sighs, “I know how much you weigh. I’ve carried you over thresholds before. Though that was when you were naked, so if you’re wearing any heavy equipment – ”

“You do recall you actually dropped me on that occasion,” Arthur says drily.

“On the bed,” Eames says. “And that was meant to happen.”

“It was halfway _to_ the bed,” Arthur points out. “We were still in the kitchen.”

“Meant to happen,” Eames insists.

Arthur laughs, minutely shifting his leg so that Eames’ hand falls forward onto his lower thigh. Up above, the golden slip of light on the wall drags longer as the sun pulls higher in an unseen sky, a time scale that seems accelerated. Arthur is struck suddenly with the word _unstable_ and, without even meaning to, his whole body tenses up, fingernails biting sharp crescents into his skin.

“Whoa, whoa,” Eames says, sounding surprised. His hand strokes over the muscle in Arthur’s thigh. “Nothing’s happening. You know how unreliable time is down here. It’s not you.”

“You ever die by crushing before?” Arthur grits out, eyes still fixed on the pinhole stretched up over them. “Not pleasant. Can take hours for the internal bleeding to finally get you. And sometimes it doesn’t. The dehydration does.”

“You’re worried you’ll bring the well down on us.”

Arthur says nothing.

“It’s not going to come down, I promise,” Eames says eventually, thumb tracing the line of Arthur’s shin.

“It’s happened before,” Arthur snaps at him. “I’ve done worse.”

There’s a moment when Arthur thinks that Eames has fallen asleep, perhaps, fingers halting on Arthur’s body; but then there’s the sound of clothes shifting and abruptly Eames is settling over Arthur’s hips. His weight is familiar, knees on either side of Arthur, sinking down gently into Arthur’s lap to give him time to adjust.

Arthur starts when Eames’ hand grazes his cheek, a brief touch while Eames tries to find his balance.

“Sex at the bottom of a well,” Arthur mutters. “Why am I not remotely surpr – ”

“If you didn’t want this, what would you do?” Eames interrupts.

Arthur blinks. “What?”

Eames makes an impatient-sounding noise. “If you didn’t want this. Me. On you like this. What would you do?”

“Eames,” Arthur starts, a little alarmed. “What are you – ”

“Say that I’m not me.” Eames’ voice drops lower, turns into something more menacing, a guttural accent twisting around his consonants. His hand comes up to cup Arthur’s jaw roughly. Arthur barely restrains himself from jerking back. “What would you do?”

“I – throw you off, probably.”

“Fight?”

Eames’ thumb digs in hard against the soft place under Arthur’s jaw. Arthur grabs him by the wrist. The wrist isn’t Eames’, is heavier, the bones larger and the skin fleshing out even underneath Arthur’s grip. 

“Eames,” Arthur says, once. A warning.

“You’d fight, wouldn’t you.” A cruel amusement creeps into Eames’ voice; Arthur wishes he could see in the blanketing dark, see through to the face that Eames is wearing. 

“I’d fucking kill you,” Arthur spits.

“But I’m just your own subconscious,” Eames says, velvety. “What happens when you fight your own subconscious? You’d still do it though, wouldn’t you. I bet you would.”

“We shoot projections all the time.”

“Projections are _manifestations_ of a subconscious, Arthur, you know better than that.” In his annoyance, Eames’ voice slides back to its usual timbre; Arthur feels a relief so complete he has to concentrate to stay upright. “You can shoot them all you like, it’s like shooting a portrait of someone. No-one actually gets hurt in the end. But your _actual_ subconscious – a memory, a thought, an idea – that’s different.”

“Sure,” Arthur says, distracted. “Like memory suppression.”

There’s a pause. Arthur can hear his own breathing, magnified to the roar of a pair of bellows in his own ears.

Finally, Eames gives a fond chuckle. “Close. The conscious mind suppresses an unpleasant aspect of the subconscious – close. But in most conflicts between the conscious and the subconscious, the subconscious wins. That’s just the nature of the human mind.”

“What are you trying to say?” Arthur demands, suddenly suspicious. “ _You’re_ a projection, you’re not my actual – ”

At that moment, the sun finally slots in directly overhead and the light from the top of the well blazes across the bottom in one thick, blinding swathe of white. Arthur’s eyes squeeze shut and he gasps at the fire across the back of his eyelids. When he slowly eases them open again, Eames is poised over him. The gold lights up the twigs in Eames’ hair, the bold outline of Eames’ shoulders, spilling down his collar and across his cheeks, across the startled part of Eames’ mouth.

“Oh,” Eames says, staring at the sun on Arthur’s face with something suddenly approaching wonder. “ _Oh_.”

The light slides away when Eames leans down and fits his mouth against Arthur’s own. The sun has moved on, just the tiniest angle but still enough to change everything in a world down below.

\--

Arthur jerks awake to the sound of a mobile phone. He snatches wildly at it, still half-asleep.

“’llo?”

“Did I disrupt your beauty sleep?” Eames says, sounding almost unfairly delighted. “I have spectacular timing. Considering it’s two in the afternoon where you supposedly are. The last time I remember you sleeping past noon there was copious chocolate body paint involved.”

Arthur suppresses a yawn, something easing in his chest at Eames’ voice. “There could be, this time. You’d never know.”

“A dress rehearsal for when I get there, hmm?” 

“I never said that.”

“If you’re sleeping around,” Eames says, mock-serious, “I will fly over and beat the shit out of him.”

“Maybe that was my aim all along,” Arthur teases. The sheets are tangled around his legs and he spares a moment to try and unravel them. “Get you here sooner. You know how I am with long-distance relationships.”

Eames laughs. “Is this a warning? Three strikes and I’m out, that sort of thing?”

“More like thirty strikes,” Arthur mumbles into the pillow. “I think you’re well past three by now.”

“How generous of you, darling.”

“It must be love.”

Eames laughs again, quieter this time and warmer. “Must be.”

Arthur gives up with the sheets and kicks them off the bed. His rational mind regrets this almost instantly, and he sighs, sitting up to retrieve them again.

“How are the migraines?” Eames says eventually. “I talked to Yusuf, he said he’ll bring something with him. You’ll get it when you pick him up from the airport in – ” Eames pauses, presumably checking his watch “ – an hour from now.”

Something twitches in Arthur’s chest. Suddenly, he remembers Ariadne.

“I – no, they’ve stopped. They stopped yesterday.”

Eames pauses. His voice turns curious. “What, just like that? Did you take something?”

“No, I didn’t take anything. Just got some more rest. Listen, I took a look at Carter’s background last night and he has a fourth passport that he got working for the CIA, and – ”

“You typically have more finesse than that when you’re trying to change the subject,” Eames cuts in.

“I’m typically not half-asleep,” Arthur retorts.

“Alright,” Eames surrenders. Arthur can hear his smile. “I’ll let it go as an apology for waking you. Send me what you have on the passport, yeah? How are the dreams?”

Arthur thinks about it, the steady stretch of rock lining the walls of a well. 

“Not as bad,” Arthur says. “They’ve stopped collapsing. We can still use Yusuf, though; Ariadne wants to explore the effect of multiple simultaneous dreamers on dream stability.”

“Mmm,” Eames agrees. “You should probably start moving then, you’ve got less than an hour to pick him up.”

“Right.”

“Keep yourself in one – ”

“ – piece, yes, I know.” Arthur fingers the edge of the hotel bed, where the crisp white linen meets the junction of his thigh. He feels as if he could reach across the phone line in the exact same way, the junction between its wires and the speaker and Eames.

\--

Arthur hasn’t seen Yusuf in over six months. In that time, Yusuf’s beard has grown even longer, thick and curly and a thing of pride. The way Yusuf beams at him over the car has a knot quickly forming in Arthur’s throat.

“I’m so bloody hungry,” is the first thing Yusuf says.

Arthur looks over at him, reaching for his seatbelt clasp. Yusuf is surprisingly fresh-faced after his flight, his eyes dark and shining, rubbing his palms together in anticipation like something straight out of a cartoon.

“You didn’t eat on the plane?” Arthur asks, pulling out of the parking bay.

“Oh, I did. The spring rolls – heaven, Arthur, I swear. I could’ve made love to them, they were so delicious. It all depends on whether or not they put prawns in, you know? I have this theory that it has to do with the prawns. Can I turn the air-con on?”

“Go ahead,” Arthur says. He relieves one hand from the wheel to feel around in the backseat. “I got you some fried rice – ”

“Arthur, you are a miracle,” Yusuf exclaims. “I’ll get it, I’ll get it.”

“It’s in that plastic bag – ”

“Got it.”

Yusuf dives almost bodily into the backseat, seatbelt straining. He emerges triumphant some moments later with a takeaway box clutched in one hand. Yusuf wields a pair of chopsticks ten times better than any Chinese national and he shows it now, daintily popping a dim sum into his mouth, eyes closing with the bliss of it.

“Wait until you try the rice,” Arthur suggests.

“There’s nothing,” Yusuf says, mouth half-full, “more satisfying than Chinese takeout. Why is that?”

“Eames would flay you for that,” Arthur points out.

“Eh, Eames prefers Thai.” Yusuf shakes his head with something resembling disbelief. “He always was a strange one. Oh, and about the job, Arthur – I can’t stay for more than a few days. I couldn’t find a cat-sitter in time, and my sister is leaving for Prague on Thursday.”

Arthur arches a brow, an amused smile hesitantly tilting his mouth. “But you found someone to babysit the dreamers for you.”

“Some world we live in,” Yusuf laughs. The sound drops a lead feeling past Arthur’s ribs, reminding him suddenly why Yusuf is here. 

Why Arthur is armed and Yusuf is not.

“Some world,” Arthur agrees, weakly. “Eames said you had something for me?”

Yusuf swallows his mouthful. “For the migraines, yes. I’ve been doing some thinking about the job as well, and I don’t really think it’s a good idea to make multiple plants.”

“It’s a complex idea we’re planting,” Arthur says. 

“You’re thinking of planting, pulling out, waiting some time for the idea to take before planting again?”

“Well, subsequent plants would only be relevant if the mark expanded on the previous plant himself. There’s just too many components to the original idea, I don’t quite see how it could be done in a single go.”

Yusuf pauses, sucking on his chopsticks thoughtfully.

“The thing is,” he says finally, “that multiple plants are dangerous. The more time you spend down there, the greater the risk. Also, you’ll have to do multiple grabs. And how can you be sure that his idea will develop in the direction you want? Don’t want to drop in on a second plant and find that his mind has taken the whole thing on a tangent.”

“I’ve heard noise being made about removing ideas.”

“You want to wipe if it gets out of hand?” Yusuf scoffs a little around the end of his chopsticks. “That’s entirely different to extracting an idea, you know. I heard about some people in Slovakia who – ”

\--

_The key is cold when he drags it across your cheek, gently. Then he digs it into the mess that is your smashed cheekbone. The pain is so white that you go blind for a moment. When you come to again, the key is swinging in front of your eyes, the man holding it loosely with thumb and forefinger._

_“This,” the man says, “is going to open a door.”_

_You look towards where he’s pointing the key. The door is sleek metal, fortified, but a matching brass keyhole glints on it dully. You think suddenly that you’ve seen that door before._

_The man taps on your forehead to regain your attention._

_“You’re an extractor. You break into safes, don’t you? Jail cells? Wherever people hold their precious things, their secrets.” The blood churns inside of your stomach. He taps you again. “I’m curious.”_

_Your mouth tries to form the words: Fuck you. Your swollen tongue doesn’t accommodate._

_The man leans in until you can see his eyes, the whites all around them._

_You memorise._

_“What have you hidden behind that door?” the man says to you, softly. He pushes up from his crouch._

\--

[04]

“ – wrong. I can’t do this.”

Arthur looks up from his notes, every page hand-written in his own loose scrawl. The migraine, thick and insistent all afternoon, seems to crescendo somewhere inside of his skull at the sight of Ariadne’s determined face. Ariadne, and Arthur knows this from experience, cannot be stopped once she has a purpose in mind. Hours spent wrestling and reasoning with her can lead nowhere if she thinks that you’re in the wrong.

“You want me to help you reprogram a man to kill people – Arthur, I don’t want to do this. At all.”

Arthur hates this job as much as anyone else, but jobs are jobs. Like most things, they are necessary.

“Ariadne,” Arthur starts, pushing his chair back as she settles herself on the edge of his desk. Her eyes are dark and narrowed beneath her brows. “We’re not reprogramming him. His criminal record – ”

“So if a man kills once it’s perfectly alright if he kills again,” Ariadne cuts in, deadpan.

“It depends who he kills.”

“That’s such bullshit,” she says angrily. “Arthur, you’re better than that.”

“I’m really not,” Arthur says. It pulls her up short and she looks at him, closely, taken by surprise. “Eames is in Jakarta right now to kill someone. The man was a rat, he sold us out. Like I said, Ariadne. It depends who he kills. Some deaths have to happen.”

Ariadne’s eyes flash. “That’s a slippery slope.”

“If we do this job, we get government protection. You’ve been out of the business, in college and all that, you don’t know how cutthroat everything has become. Raids are happening all over Europe. Five months ago, Kowalski and his entire team was executed just two months after their arrest. They cut through all the red tape, they put a new Bill through.” Arthur pauses, rubs at his temples with a wince. “Two months.”

“You’re scared.”

“I’m concerned. You should be too.”

“You and Eames are the best at what you do,” she points out. “Which means it’ll take quite a lot to catch you.”

“Which means they’ll come after us first,” Arthur corrects, meeting her steely look with one of his own. “Extraction, inception – the whole business of dreaming – it’s different to your typical crime, Ariadne. We’re not high-end bank robbers. We’re not even hired killers. We break into people’s minds, we mess with their secrets. We tamper with a person’s right to _think_ , the most primitive right, and people won’t stand for that. It was fine while dreamsharing stayed relatively rare, but now you can buy an inception for under a million.”

“Which is why we can’t do this,” Ariadne insists, leaning forward. “Incepting a man to kill someone else – ”

“ – is the ticket for us to keep on dreaming.”

“Is the _worst possible form of inception_. This isn’t like with Fischer.”

“We started something with Fischer,” Arthur says quietly. The pummelling feel in his head makes it difficult to think in a straight line. “Without us, inception wouldn’t exist.”

Ariadne falls silent, blinking. Arthur has surprised her. He can see her processing all that he’s said, the words ordering and re-ordering behind her intelligent eyes. For a split second he thinks that she’s going to argue but instead she just looks away, slightly uncomfortable.

“Does Eames feel the same way?” Ariadne says finally.

“He doesn’t ask as many questions.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Arthur watches her, the firm set of her mouth. “I don’t know. He takes the jobs I take, that’s all.”

“He trusts you.”

“Yes.”

“ _I_ trust you.”

She says it with a fierceness that should be reassuring, but instead just intensifies Arthur’s headache to the point where he begins to see white stars.

“Alright,” Arthur manages, giving a tight-lipped smile. Ariadne starts forward. “No, it’s alright. I’m fine.”

\--

Arthur thinks it must be the lack of sleep. By three the words on the pages blur into one giant seam of black-skewered text, vowels out of place, and Arthur makes an excuse to Ariadne and goes out into the mess of weeds around the warehouse. The headache is making him nauseous. Disregarding the pinstriped Dunhill he’s wearing – something he would never have done on a different day – he slides down the concrete side of the warehouse, letting the rough burn against his back ground him. He pulls his knees up because that lessens the swaying in his head. The wind feels good on his face. He closes his eyes.

Some years ago, Arthur had been two layers deep with Eames on a militarised extraction. Through some slip-up or other, they’d found themselves barricaded into an abandoned train-yard, the hulking corpses of discarded trains hurriedly re-arranged by Arthur into the walls of a labyrinth.

“I thought it was a maxim of yours never to change dreams midway through them,” Eames had said.

“Are you complaining?” Arthur had shot back, mostly on reflex. His mind was elsewhere. The labyrinth was a circular one, and if they kept running at the speed they were going at, they would emerge from the other end in fifteen minutes or so. Too long. And if their subject’s subconscious sent a helicopter, it would mean the definitive end of them.

“I’m just curious,” Eames had said, keeping perfect pace. “Do you normally carry the plans of a complex maze inside your head at all times?”

“This isn’t a complex maze.”

Eames had raised his eyebrows.

“A complex maze would be three-dimensional,” Arthur had snapped. “This is just an improvisation. Help me with this door, would you?”

They’d pried open with some difficulty a rusted door to one of the train carriages. Once inside Arthur had immediately headed off, mind whirring with blueprints and upcoming turns, where one carriage merged seamlessly into the next.

Behind him, Eames had whistled appreciatively. “A maze inside of a maze. Impressive.”

“It’s the same maze,” Arthur had said, distracted. “Just a different part of – listen, there was a train station outside the post office, right? If I can get you to the train station, I can get you to the PO box.”

“Arthur, the projections are between us and the station – ”

“Right.”

Arthur had swung to his immediate left, a train carriage seeming to branch halfway through. All around them was the faded decadence of the old, bygone era of the 19th century, Arthur’s favourite when it came to trains, the ancient smell of piled velvet and dust and the water-stains on the deep red wallpaper. Gold lamps, cobwebbed, in brackets on the walls. Arthur rammed his shoulder into the door to the next carriage, not slowing down, not checking behind himself for Eames.

“We’re going in a straight line,” Eames had pointed out after some time, only slightly choppy from the continuous running. “If we want to get to the station, shouldn’t we be doubling back?”

“I designed the entire level to be circular,” Arthur had said shortly. The plush carpet beneath his feet began to melt away. “A circle has an infinite number of sides.”

“Is that supposed to be relevant?”

The fittings on the walls were changing, as if while the two of them ran someone had pushed the fast-forward button through all the centuries. 19th century had begun to bleed into the austere simplicity of wartime 1940.

“Follow the circumference of a circle,” Arthur had said, in between carefully regulated breaths, the landscape outside flying past as he ran, “and you never have a corner. You have to – turn, continuously. Smoothly. The smaller the circle, the more you feel the turn. Have a large enough circle – an entire level – then you almost don’t feel the turn at all. Any straight line will take you back to where you started. It’s a paradox, it – there’s the city outside now.”

“Wouldn’t you just – run off the edge of the circle?”

“Do you ever run off the edge of the earth?”

Eames had pulled up to a stop, forcing Arthur to as well. Arthur had braced a hand against a yellow-painted railing – the sort you’d find in any modern-day train or subway – and taken in the sight of him, Eames half bent over with his hands on his knees, panting lightly and looking up at Arthur through a sweat-soaked muss of dark blond hair.

“Fuck,” Eames had said, voice openly impressed. “I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve ever worked with you.”

Arthur had eyed him cautiously, catching his own breath. “Mmm.”

“Never would have guessed it,” Eames had said.

A jolt had run through the entire carriage then, and then a screech as the train began to move. Arthur grabbed hold of the railing, settling into the typical rhythm of a train passing through suburbia.

“A minute or so before we pull into the station,” Arthur had said, trying not to notice how bright Eames’ eyes suddenly were. The genuine interest that had settled onto Eames’ face, a look that Arthur had never seen there before. “I’ll cover you if we run into any projections.”

“Alright. Just make sure that it’s the right station.”

“Just make sure you don’t fuck it up again.”

Eames’ gaze had turned darker, flaring briefly with heat. “I’d do a lot of things to see this side of you.”

They’d stood together there in the sway of the train, the streets of the city falling away alongside. With the rumble of the wheels underneath his feet and Eames’ eyes fixed unashamedly on his face, Arthur had felt at one with the train and its momentum, the feel of a thing set in a motion which had formerly been still.

\--

Ariadne is in the corner of the warehouse when Arthur goes back in, her cardigan and her scarf slung over a seat-back. She’s draped over a beach chair. Her PASIV line is plugged in. Next to her on the floor lies a mess of complicated plans, all executed with Ariadne’s scratchy lines. A few of the drawings are only half-completed, lines bursting with the fervent energy of someone who has had a brilliant idea, tries to put it on paper, then gives up halfway with the knowledge that the idea is too vivid, too uncontained, to be made into a diagram.

A sharp spike of pain goes through Arthur’s skull at the sight of Ariadne lying there.

“Fuck.” Arthur eases himself into the nearest chair, dignity abandoned and simply cradling his head. “ _Fuck_.”

Beside his elbow, the PASIV hisses regularly. The rise and drop of Ariadne’s chest. Arthur watches her for a dizzying moment, the slender and delicate curve of her wrist. He knows without even having to calculate that he could snap that wrist and all of her fingers, that he could do it between one breath and the next.

The thought stirs up something and he quickly tamps it down. With the migraine, none of his thoughts ever really make sense.

After a moment of head-splitting vertigo, the second PASIV line curled within the machine becomes more and more irresistible. In dreams the headache is numbed to the point where it’s only present if Arthur concentrates. Arthur knows better than to drop into dreams midway, having done it once in Budapest to a truly catastrophic result, but Arthur doesn’t seem to be able to hold a dream himself anymore. With Ariadne as the dreamer, perhaps the dream will last.

Arthur is struck then with a feeling that’s vaguely familiar. Untangling the spare line and swabbing his wrist, Arthur shores it up and recognises it as the same one he’d felt heading into the Fischer job with Cobb. Like taking a stone and pitching it down the Alps; the split second, while the stone is still in the air, when you know that that very same stone you’ve just pitched will, in its course down the mountain, start an avalanche.

\--

Arthur is in an empty city with the great husks of skyscrapers looming up over him.

The sky is stormy, which is probably just residual irritation harboured by Ariadne over their discussion earlier. The air, crisp and bristling, has the overcharged feel that always comes after a chain of lightning strikes.

“Arthur?”

Ariadne, in the same outfit she’s wearing up top, is standing just halfway down the street. She starts towards him, hands in the pockets of her cardigan.

“Maze in the street plan?” Arthur says, looking around him critically. “It looks alright.”

“It’s a three tier maze.” Ariadne peers at him, then says, “I’m guessing your migraine has disappeared.”

“Down here, yes. What do you mean, three tier? You’re working on something underground?”

Ariadne wrinkles her nose and stops in front of him. “No, I hate sewers. Can’t believe people would crawl around in them. No, it’s up there. The whole thing’s three dimensional.”

Arthur looks up the giant sweep of steel and concrete, noting that each skyscraper is identical. The window placements, the outer facades of the buildings, have variations to make the effect less jarring; but the fire escapes and the crucial doors are all perfectly matching throughout.

“Maze going up the skyscrapers,” Ariadne says, gesturing at the nearest one with a shoulder.

Arthur nods. “All the same in every block?”

“Well, I could make them all different, but then you’d have to memorise over five hundred layouts.”

Arthur looks at her, lip tweaking slightly. “Are you doubting my skills?”

“Oh, I’m sure you could do it, given fifty years or so.”

“You did the roofs too, didn’t you,” Arthur says, craning his neck. “I can – there’s one. You’ve got bridges spanning between them. A maze on the bottom, a maze on the top, and a maze connecting the two. That’s pretty good work.”

“Given what he does for a living, I figured we could use some extra insurance,” Ariadne says.

“Mmm.”

Arthur takes three steps to the right, runs a hand down the wall of the building there. He can see the way the cement has been painted over twice, spider-cracks for authenticity. Ariadne has always been one for detail.

“I’ve got to check a few things on the roof,” says Ariadne. “I’ve been having a bit of trouble visualising it properly, it has to be different enough to the street plan to throw projections off.”

Arthur taps his nails against the wall. “You head up, then. I’ll poke around down here.”

“Right. The elevators are working, so you can get to the roof that way if you want to find me. Don’t get lost.”

“I probably will,” Arthur says, smiling at her back. She barks out a quick laugh, tossing it over her shoulder with a white-toothed grin. “But I think that’s the point.”

With Ariadne gone, Arthur starts exploring the maze in earnest. It’s a sprawling, closely-packed array of streets that will be perfect for generating paranoia. With the buildings so tall, the musty sunlight weaves feebly between giant blocks of shadow, every corner generic, the street signs blanked out. Ariadne has added planters along the roads but they’re empty as of yet. Not a wisp of green in sight. The palette is mostly shades of grey, but Arthur knows from experience that it won’t stay that way. Once Ariadne has figured out the backbones of the city it’ll spring to a cramped but spectacular life, bright colours to crowd the subject in and trap him. 

Arthur takes a left past a streetlamp, satisfied.

The height makes it difficult to see the bridges without honing in on them. They’re narrow, transparent, made of glass perhaps. The light passes right through them without casting shadows on the streets underneath. They’re too high up to shoot at comfortably.

Arthur makes an inner note to tell Ariadne to alter the bridges slightly – they’ll be too hard to see on the rooftops otherwise, and no-one wants to run where he thinks there’s going to be a bridge only to plunge several tens of stories down. The planters, too. Their placement could be used as landmarks in the maze, a subtle code in their painted patterns maybe, just in case the tangle of three complete tiers gets the better of them and they lose their way. Not likely, but Arthur lives for back-up plans. Any trigger would probably be of help.

He is buried deep in thinking this when he turns the next corner and runs into Eames.

Eames is being shot in the back.

This only registers for Arthur because of the sudden burst of red in a city of monochrome, not even connected to Eames or to why he is here. Arthur thinks automatically, _sucking chest wound_ , then, _he’s lost a left lung. Won’t make it. Five or six minutes, tops._

When _Eames_ finally comes out through the pipeline, the migraine rams back like a thunderbolt.

Arthur is only a step away from him, so when Eames topples forward with the force of another shot he goes straight into Arthur. It blunts Arthur’s draw so that the single round from the Glock goes wide, sprays a mist of chips off of a skyscraper. Normally, Arthur can pinpoint the source of a shot but with the headache battering against his temples, he can hardly manage to stay upright. The wet heat of blood seeping through Arthur’s shirt. Eames, heavy. Arthur knows that Eames is just a projection but the panic overwhelms him just the same, the kind that Arthur can typically suppress but which, now, seems to saturate the air. Every breath just appears to draw more in until it’s all that Arthur can think of, the migraine and Eames, the two following each other like the beats of a drum until his skin jumps with the short scratch of whiskers against his neck, the wet gurgle. Eames mumbles something into Arthur’s chest and Arthur gets an arm around Eames’ waist, half-lifting, half-dragging him behind a planter. 

Eames is pale, his eyes closed and his breathing shallow. Bloody bubbles emerge halfway down his chest. Arthur puts his palms against the wound – muscle memory, that – and tries to lean his weight down to stop the bleeding, skin slipping, the wild thrum in his skull deafening him.

There, the death rattle.

“Jesus Christ,” Arthur manages, hands leaving the wound and going everywhere. Eames’ neck. Eames’ jaw. Eames’ hair and his eyelids, his carotid pulse. “Jesus fucking _Christ_.”

When the pulse goes, slipping away beneath Arthur’s fingers, Arthur thinks he imagines the sudden hard shudder that goes through the ground and up past the soles of his feet. Then the glass shatters above him and rains straight down, blown out from the windows as if by a grenade.

_Dream is collapsing_ , Arthur’s mind supplies through the scatter of panic. _Ariadne is hurt._

Arthur peers down the length of the street reflexively and when he next looks down, Eames’ body is gone.

“Fuck. Oh, fuck.” Arthur pushes shakily up to his feet and his palms are red, sticky. He wipes them on his shirt. 

There’s a haze and Arthur’s mind can’t quite break through it, just a cloaking terror that follows him. He runs the two metres or so to the nearest door and barrels in blindly, the sound of his shoes staccato-loud. He leaves a smudge of blood on the elevator buttons.

The elevator comes down agonisingly slow. 

Once he’s in it there’s just the silent rush, with Arthur’s heartbeat and the distant echoing rumble to mark the floor numbers. Blood in the cracks of Arthur’s nails. The death rattle, replayed. 

Again. 

Again.

And then he’s out, and the air is cold on the roof, filled with the tell-tale whistle of high altitude. Without anything to block the light it’s blinding in comparison to the streets below, the storm-streaked sky lit up by lightning and dark at the tips of deep grey clouds. The roof that Arthur is standing on has no railing at the edge.

“Arthur!” Ariadne shouts.

Arthur can see that Ariadne is only a roof away. The maze stretches out in all directions behind her, her hair whipping up against her face. Every building is the exact same height so that they are like two pieces on a giant chessboard, the glass walkways crisscrossing almost randomly from square to square. Arthur steps to the edge, heart bucking, looks down.

“You’re bleeding,” Ariadne yells, voice growing higher in the wind. “What happened? The fringes of the maze are collapsing, I was just standing here, what the hell is – ”

\--

_The key makes a sharp sound as it fits in the lock. It echoes. You flinch without meaning to._

_“I’m just after some names,” the man says, patiently._

_I’m not a traitor, you think. You cling to it._

  
\--

[03]

“ – red one or the green one?”

Arthur looks at both of the shirts in question. The first one is not actually red – it’s more puce, liver-coloured, and it has a diamond pattern. The second one has a paisley collar, which is probably the only reason why Eames picked it up. Even lime green is a little too much for Eames, who commonly claims the colour dries out his contact lenses.

“Are you actually asking me to decide?” Arthur says. “I want to fire an MX missile at both of them.”

Eames grins and puts both of them back on the rack. This, sadly, is what notifies Arthur that he’s actually dreaming, which should say something about their relationship.

“Oh, damnit, if I’m dreaming anyway you might as well have them,” Arthur says, snatching them both back up again. He takes great care to touch the coat-hangers only. He does have limits. “Here. And stop beaming at me like that.”

“I don’t want them,” Eames says, taking them out of Arthur’s hands. “I was just testing you.”

“Oh, you bastard,” Arthur says.

Eames laughs, giving a flash of his crooked front teeth. “Come on. There’s a boat outside, we can go for a spin. I’ll make it up to you. There’s caviar and vintage champagne.”

“I thought we were past the point of testing each other,” Arthur protests. Eames pushes him out of the shop with a gentle hand on the small of his back, and Arthur allows the motion instinctively. “We spent the entire first year bumbling our way through all that.”

“And what a marvellous bumble it was,” Eames says cheerfully.

The steps of the shop lead down to a pier, the weather-beaten one Arthur remembers from his mother’s old house. The light blue paint is peeling off. There’s a little white rowboat tied to its end, bobbing up and down in the lapping current.

“This feels like a nursery rhyme,” Arthur says, immediately baulking. “Does it even have a motor?”

“I’m not going to make you row,” Eames says. He leans in to nip Arthur’s earlobe gently. “I promise.”

Eames rows with his shirt off, the thick muscle of his arms starting out from the white of his undershirt. Arthur can make out the almost savage swirl of his tattoos, bold lines and curves that Arthur has traced his tongue over in beds and on floors too many times to count. Eames is looking out over the water and the sun strikes his face. His eyes are narrowed against it, the gold stippling over his eyelashes, over the stretch of stubble across his jaw. Arthur knows that Eames shaves every second day because Eames likes the look of stubble-burn on Arthur’s thighs. Arthur knows that Eames pretends not to be able to cook because he likes to sit at the kitchen when Arthur is working, likes to watch Arthur’s hands deftly handle the knife. Arthur knows that, if he were to pitch himself forwards, the sweat drop trickling down Eames’ neck would taste like the two years of whatever they have, all sharp salt and a want as broad as the water they’re floating in.

“Eames,” Arthur says, quietly. “Stop.”

Eames blinks, caught by surprise. The boat keeps moving for a second or so after he pulls the oars up, leaving a long, thoughtless trail of ripples. Arthur shifts, close enough to run his palm over the back of Eames’ hand and up his forearm.

Eames meets Arthur’s stare with one of his own. His mouth twitches. “Are you trying to test _me_ , now?”

“I don’t have to,” Arthur says. “I already know the answer.”

“Some things are worth proving twice,” Eames says.

Arthur’s hand skirts up to Eames’ shoulder, dipping a finger beneath the undershirt to feel the jut of Eames’ collarbone. Eames’ skin is damp with a thin sheen of sweat.

“I know,” Arthur says, leaning in. And he does.

  
\--

The way the dream ends is spectacular. The bare horizon surrounding them on all sides cracks suddenly with a jarring, snap-frozen sound, and without any warning the water there turns a magnesium white as if it’s somehow been set on fire. Within moments the white glare is sweeping inward, contracting like a ring towards the boat. It’s only when it’s within a metre of him that Arthur realises that the water has turned to glass, the sun searing across it like something in flames, erupting the moment it touches the boat and collapsing the dream in fire-flecked shards that tear Arthur to a gaping wakefulness.

  
\--

“You haven’t slept,” Ariadne says two days later, hovering around Arthur’s desk with an open file. The papers within it are upside-down, so Arthur knows that she’s just using it for a prop.

Arthur scrolls back up on his browser window, re-reading.

“I have,” he lies. “A little.”

Arthur jumps when Ariadne whams the file down on his desk. Nobody, since the days of Cobb, has ever done that. Not even Eames. Arthur cocks a brow and tries not to let the amusement show on his face, since if there’s one thing Ariadne absolutely detests it’s when people don’t take her seriously.

“When is Eames getting here,” Ariadne demands.

“Two days, he told me.”

“You won’t last two days.” Ariadne begins to roll her sleeves up, as if preparing to wrestle Arthur bodily from his chair. “Use the PASIV. Catch up on a couple of hours. I’ll have a sketch of the levels on your desk by then.”

Arthur hasn’t slept because his natural dreams no longer last. Always, they end with falling beams and the sky dropping out at unpredictable moments, trees and cars and entire mountains going to shreds for no apparent reason at all. Even while hooked up to the PASIV, this doesn’t change. Arthur’s first dream lasts all of two minutes up top; his second dream lasts almost half an hour, but that’s only because the hotel he’s standing in collapses and pins him, broken ribs and snapped legs and all, halfway underneath a coffee table. Across the six hour period the table slowly gives and Arthur dies with plaster dust in his mouth, breath crushed out of him millimetre by millimetre, arms broken and useless without a gun.

“Hey,” Ariadne says, surprised, when he sits up from it and immediately heads towards the door. “Where are you going? It hasn’t even been an hour – ”

“Need a smoke,” Arthur says. Perhaps it’s his tone, but she doesn’t stop him. “Need to make a couple of calls.”

His first call is to Yusuf. To get the job done they’ll need to be capable of holding a dream for longer than fifteen minutes, and Arthur can no longer manage that. Yusuf is pleased to hear from him, especially with the mention of cash, and promises to fly over to Amsterdam as soon as possible to formulate something with higher stability.

“Why do you need it, though?” Yusuf asks curiously. “You’ve always managed on regular Somnacin before.”

Arthur can feel the beginnings of a migraine prickling at the back of his neck. “I don’t know.”

“Typically only car crash victims – ”

“I don’t know,” Arthur repeats, digging his fingertips into his temples. It’s been over a year since he’s had an actual migraine, and he’s not particularly thrilled that he’s having one now. “Maybe I’m stressed. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Ah. You’ve been missing Eames, is that it?”

“Missing Eames doesn’t come close to post traumatic stress,” Arthur says flatly. “So I’m pretty sure that’s not the reason, Yusuf. I’ll get the tickets to you within a day or so.”

Yusuf chuckles knowingly. “If you say so, Arthur. Fine.”

Arthur’s second call is meant for Eames, but it’s barely four in the morning in Jakarta and Arthur gets halfway through dialling the number before remembering this. He finishes dialling anyway, stares at the number until the screen goes dark, and then pockets his phone.

He’s not quite sure when the point came in their relationship when Arthur began to feel the need to tell Eames everything. Once upon a time, anything that had passed between them was strictly related to the job at hand – Eames, despite his generally slapdash air, has always been a consummate professional and any barbs, any snide comments they’d tossed to each other had been more of a mutual critique of each other’s working styles than anything actually personal. Faced with an identical situation to the one that Arthur is in now, the Arthur of three or four years ago would have called Eames to discuss the impact on the impending inception; they would have argued, perhaps, about the psychology of it, honed in on a _reason_ for Arthur’s dream instability.

Now, Arthur finds with some kind of surprise that he doesn’t particularly care for the reason. Some part of him is not alarmed or even affected by it. Arthur knows that spending a lifetime in the dreamsharing business has consequences for a person’s natural dreaming, but a tiny grain buried inside his mind tells him that this is not the reason for what is happening. There is another reason, a baser reason, but his mind is not willing to dig it out just yet.

He doesn’t want to call Eames to talk about the job. He would mention the collapsing dreams, of course, but Arthur certainly would not dwell on it. In a way that’s different to how things were years ago, Arthur wants to call Eames to talk about other things. The weather. The people. The smell of Jakarta, the heat of it rising up off the streets. Arthur wants to hear Eames describe everything until Arthur can see the bright shopfronts, the muggy weight of the incessant rain, the mud. Until Arthur can almost insert himself in the space right beside Eames’ telephone, close enough to catch the way Eames always shifts around while he talks, scratching his chin, twisting the line, trying to feel out the gouges in the desk, the habit he has of chewing his lower lip.

Arthur wants to tell Eames everything that he can’t quite voice. It’s a strange, desperate feeling that Arthur gets around Eames, as if each second is too precious for Arthur not to try harder, to pour more of himself into every one of them.

  
\--

Hagler’s network in Amsterdam is extensive.

The small café where Rachel Mayer is sitting is half in the sun and half out of it. Arthur walks straight past her table into the café’s interior, choosing a table nestled to the side of it where he can have a clear view of the back of her head. She’s an attractive woman, slender and tall, with hawklike eyes and a narrow chin. Her hands are hard-boned and dangerous.

Arthur orders himself a triple-shot Irish crème latte.

She sits and reads a magazine for half an hour, leisurely turning the pages and sipping her tea. Arthur only gets halfway through his coffee. The migraine he’d picked up earlier in the morning has stayed, pulsing dully like an undernote. It’s not quite at a distracting level, but at a level apparently just enough to put Arthur off from sitting in front of his laptop and finishing up on some finicky research. The fresh air feels good on Arthur’s neck. He likes the way it slips under his open collar.

Mayer closes her magazine – Arthur makes note of the title – before getting up and putting her lightweight coat back on. When she sets off down the street her high-heels click. Arthur waits two beats, then follows her.

They spend the afternoon in this mute game of cat and mouse. Arthur allows himself to settle into a rhythm.

Mayer’s life appears to be extremely ordinary. She drops some letters off at a post office, does a tiny amount of grocery shopping, pauses at the window of a small boutique and forcing Arthur to momentarily sit down at a bench to keep out of the window’s reflection. She spends half an hour buying a printer cartridge and comes out to find a parking ticket on her car. Nothing, except for those quick blue eyes and the subtle bulge in the side of her overcoat, gives away the fact that she plays a crucial role in the theft of military technology.

And then, sometime nudging half past five, Arthur steps around a corner without checking it and comes face-to-face with Mayer’s gun.

The only reason why Arthur doesn’t check it properly is because the migraine flares up at that point in time.

Even through the haze of it, with red at the edges of his vision, Arthur manages to knock the barrel aside. Mayer is startlingly strong, and she’s just as fast. Arthur can recognise ex-military when he sees it. The heel of her hand slams at Arthur’s throat and then searching for nerves, for vulnerable places, her mouth twisted down into a snarling line until Arthur finally manages to pin her against the wall and choke the air out of her with her own long hair.

  
\--

Eames is making ridiculous faces at the camera, which Arthur has to bite on the inside of his cheek not to smile at. For a blissful moment, the migraine recedes.

“You do realise the connection is crap,” Arthur says. “Which means the video is freezing up every second or so. Which means you’re coming across as even more of an idiot than you’re probably intending to come across as.”

“You always cut me down right at the knees,” Eames says.

“Then stop making it easy,” Arthur retorts. “And for the record, I’m still very pissed at you. You’ll have to do more than make faces at me to change that.”

Eames smiles, a loping, easy smile. “Can’t rush a hit, Arthur. You of all people know that.”

“Stop quoting my own words back at me,” Arthur says, disgusted. “That’s just blatantly low.”

“I leant on him a little too hard,” Eames admits, adjusting the camera towards the right. It worsens things. Eames adjusts it back to the left. “He jumped on a plane to Uganda overnight.”

“Doesn’t excuse the fact that you won’t be here tomorrow.”

“I’ll send flowers.”

“Champagne.”

“A bone-handled hunting knife.”

“How about you forgo the tourist-rounds of all the markets and focus on getting yourself here,” Arthur says. “Though if you do send champagne, if it isn’t vintage I’m running away with the greengrocer down the street.”

“And what street is that?” Eames says, too casually. “I only ask for professional reasons, mind.”

“I’m not scared of you trying to kill him,” says Arthur, “since it appears to be outside your area of expertise, given Carter. How many extra days, do you think?”

“Two or three. You were right, he’s scared bloody shitless. Sneaking around like a rat.”

“You be careful now.”

Eames doesn’t reply to that, just looks across with a damnably fond expression that makes something behind Arthur’s rib-bones ache. Then the look grows sharp, narrows in on something.

“You’ve got a bruise right across your throat,” Eames says.

Arthur reins in the inexplicable urge to touch it. “Rachel Mayer. I was tailing her yesterday and things got a little bit out of hand. It’s fine.”

“Any – ”

“No, just a couple of bruises.” Arthur holds up the one on the inside of his right wrist, the deep scratches from her fingernails. “It shouldn’t have happened, I turned a corner and she had a gun on me. I got her body to Acosta, he’ll take care of it. She probably won’t be missed for up to a month. We have plenty of time to get the plant in.”

“The last time someone caught you by surprise around a corner, you were drunk,” Eames says, leaning closer towards the screen.

“It’s nothing,” Arthur says. “I had a migraine. I’ve been having it ever since yesterday.”

Eames doesn’t ask if Arthur has taken anything for it, because aspirin has rather nasty side effects when it interacts with residual Somnacin in the bloodstream.

“You know better than to tail with a migraine,” Eames points out.

As if to punctuate Eames’ point, the migraine returns and beats time against the roof of Arthur’s skull.

“I thought it would go away with the fresh air,” Arthur says, wincing.

“Get more sleep.”

“I can’t.”

Eames sighs. “Arthur, the timeline for this job is very lax. You don’t have to spend every night researching until three or four in the morning, you’ve got to – ”

“No, it’s not that,” Arthur interrupts. Eames hikes a brow, disbelieving. “No, my – my dreams have been collapsing lately. Natural dreams, lucid dreams. I last about an hour in a natural, fifteen minutes in a lucid. And then they just collapse. I don’t know why.”

“You’ve always been the most stable out of all of us,” Eames says, surprised. Arthur watches him run a thumb unconsciously over his bottom lip. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ve called Yusuf in.”

“Did he say anything about it?”

“Apparently I’m going through some kind of post traumatic stress,” Arthur says, deadpan and daring Eames to believe it with a level glare. “It’s probably just the migraine, it should go away.”

“Don’t go tailing anyone – ”

“ – until it’s gone, alright. Okay.”

They spend the next few minutes just sitting, the bad connection crackling every now and then. Eames stares unabashedly at the screen; Arthur is more subtle, unseeingly staring down at a file in front of him and sneaking short looks at Eames between page turns. The quick eye movements make the migraine worse. After a while, Arthur gives up completely and returns Eames’ stare through the pixellated Skype screen.

“I was thinking,” Arthur says finally. “When I was getting Mayer to Acosta yesterday – they don’t have to do this via inception. It would be simpler just to assassinate each contact directly.”

Eames straightens up slightly, clearing his throat. “It’s the same end result, but it sends a different message. Place hits and the rest of the business just thinks, correctly, that it’s an outside force. They band together. They ultimately get harder to manage. But do it with inception, let one of their own loose on the others – it makes the rest of the business doubt each other. It breaks them up from the inside. The government just has to sit back and watch the show play out. Most people in that business don’t trust each other, a large-scale betrayal like that would split them right down the middle.” Eames pauses, looks at Arthur. “But you already knew that, didn’t you.”

Arthur shrugs. He doesn’t bother to lie around Eames. “Never thought we’d end up doing this sort of thing.”

“Didn’t you?” Eames says.

Arthur opens his mouth but then the warehouse door clangs shut. It’s Ariadne, back from a coffee run, and Arthur automatically darts a look at the clock on his laptop screen.

“I should let you go,” Eames says, catching the unintended hint. “It’s getting late on my side anyway. I have to be up in six hours to take the flight.”

“I guess,” Arthur says reluctantly.

Five minutes later, Arthur’s laptop is closed and he’s trying to focus on the pile of notepaper in front of him. Between his own shorthand and the growing headache, he doesn’t even notice when Ariadne comes over to his desk, both hands free of coffee cups. When she speaks, Arthur very nearly jumps.

“I’ve been thinking these past few days,” Ariadne says, startling Arthur with the sudden hardness in her voice. “And about this job, Arthur, I think it’s – ”

  
\--

_You fight as they move your chair across the room. Your hands are slippery from where the plastic cord cuts your skin, the stir of blood in your fingertips almost excruciating after so long without proper circulation. You snarl and bite like a wild animal. They put you right at the door, so close to you that you could kick the door open if your feet were free._

_The man is holding a blunt-nosed Beretta, the shine of it gleaming in the fluorescent lights._

_“Names, Arthur, or I shoot whatever’s behind this door,” he says blandly. You bare your bloodied teeth at him._

  
\--

[02]

“ – piece.”

The taxi comes, and Eames goes.

  
\--

Arthur wakes strangely.

He becomes aware of it in small parts, like an aeroplane plunging downward through the air before pulling up short, and then plunging again. In fits and starts he stumbles into full alertness. The apartment, cooling from the air-conditioning unit, emerges as a gray and alien scene in the spill of the streetlamps from just outside. The ensuite sink is dripping again. The sound of it is out of sync with the stilted thud of Arthur’s heartbeat.

As Arthur lies there, unsure of why he’d woken or what he’d been dreaming in the moments just before, he feels an unearthly panic knife its way through him. It’s directionless, without any appreciable meaning. The force of it rattles at Arthur’s shoulders, through his clavicle and high up into his throat, until Arthur realises that the only reason why his shoulders are shaking is because he is crying recklessly into his hands. He can taste the sharp salt at the edge of his lip. All around, the dark moonscape of tables and desk and the dresser Eames had shipped all the way from London stays silent in the face of this subhuman spectacle propped up against the headboard of the bed. The room’s walls absorb the shock of sobs like witnesses to a slaughtering.

In the apartment above, and in the apartment below, the night slips through the bedrooms dreamlessly.

  
\--

Arthur hates waiting around for take-off inside of a plane. There are apparently too many in the line for the runway at LAX, so the stewardesses are hovering around while the tarmac edges past in inches and feet.

Arthur is tired.

He’d woken sometime during the night. He’d fallen asleep shortly after, though in the time between those two reference points he can’t quite remember what had happened. A drink, maybe. A trip to the bathroom. The sun coming in through the window next to him is too bright and he shades his eyes with the back of his hand. A stewardess offers him the _Wall Street Journal_. He takes one. He taps impatiently on the crease.

The subject of the job is Vincent Hagler, who – through some elaborate net of contacts and associates – has a knack for stealing US military technology. Missiles, encryption. The entire works.

Arthur is vaguely afraid of identifying with him.

Drink offers now, and the plane is still on the ground. Arthur resists the urge to bounce his knee.

Arthur wonders how they are going to approach this one. Emotion, always. But the process of picking _which_ emotion to use is the key to every successful inception.

Hatred is too strong, as is revenge. A strong, negative emotion of that kind has the capacity to damage a subject’s mind. Love is a positive emotion, but hard to control and difficult to link to an act like murder.

_Regret_ springs into Arthur’s mind without any particular reason at all, throwing him.

“Cabin crew, please return to your seats,” a voice crackles overhead. “We are about to take off.”

  
\--

Ariadne is waiting for him at the airport. She looks for a second like she wants to jump on him, but eventually settles for punching him in the shoulder. Hard.

“You’re late,” she says. Then she cracks a grin. “The warehouse has a gigantic plasma TV.”

“What a very warm welcome after almost two years,” Arthur says, mirroring her smile until she _does_ actually jump on him. “Whoa. Ariadne, I can’t – your hair’s in my mouth.”

“Ew, gross.” But she doesn’t let go of him.

She keeps him company in the taxi ride to his hotel, chatting about college and teasing Arthur incessantly about Eames. Arthur can see that she’s lost some of her wide-eyed impulsiveness, gained an edge that’s grittier and more refined. Given a year or two of Arthur’s training and Ariadne could be dangerous.

“Are you going to call Eames?” she prods him chirpily when they get to the sidewalk of Arthur’s hotel.

Arthur gives her a look. “Maybe. But then, maybe not.”

“You don’t give me anything to go on, do you?” she says.

“Give you an inch – ”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ariadne says, laughing and pushing him towards the concierge desk. “Go to sleep, you excessively boring man. I’ll get it all out of Eames later, anyway.”

When Arthur finally gets himself up to his suite he’s so tired that he misdials Eames’ number twice. Arthur does actually have the number in question on speed-dial but he likes to watch each digit come up on the screen, as if it proves something, though he’s not entirely sure what. He collapses on the perfectly made-up bed as he waits for Eames to pick up the phone.

“Darling, you made it,” Eames says with enthusiasm after two tones and a click. “Congratulations.”

“Contrary to your belief,” Arthur says, “I _am_ capable of taking an eleven hour flight without supervision. How’s Jakarta? I hope you packed your insect repellent.”

“Arthur,” Eames says, exasperated. “You are turning into my mother. That is not a good thing.”

“But did you pack it?”

“Of course I packed it, I’ve stayed in Jakarta before.”

“Mmm.” Arthur wants desperately to turn off the bedroom lights, but they are too far away for him to reach. He settles instead for pulling a pillow over his face. “Ariadne looks good. She’s a little taller now.”

“You sound tired.”

“I _am_ tired. It’s nearly one. You know how much I hate sleeping on planes.”

“Yeah,” Eames says, almost smilingly. “Now, Arthur, before you fall asleep listening to my dulcet tones, I’ve got to tell you that I’ve heard some gossip going around in Jakarta. About this job. You remember Ebertson, don’t you?”

“From the Stepanov job?” Arthur says, frowning. “Yeah, I remember. He almost got us killed.”

“Word is that he wanted this Hagler job very, very badly. Apparently he’s pulled together a new team of his own. He’s in the States now, or maybe he’s moved since then to Mexico, but I just want you to keep an eye out.” Something whistles on Eames’ end – perhaps he’s making tea. “You know how he’ll do almost anything.”

“Do you know who the rest of his team are?”

“No, but you can find that out. And there’s something else.”

Arthur removes the pillow for a moment to try and undo his shoelaces one-handed. “I’m listening.”

“The inceptions here – they’re nothing polished, of course, but it might help us with Hagler. What they do is they spend the first two levels suggesting an idea completely opposite to the actual one they are trying to plant. It’s not deep enough to take properly, you know, but it sticks long enough to last the third level down. So in the third level, and by this time your subject is thinking exactly what you don’t want him to think, you get him in a stressful situation and force him to choose between the two ideas. He’ll choose the opposite one, of course, because you’ve just spent two entire levels ramming it home for him. But then you couple that choice with a very, very traumatic consequence – ”

“ – and his waking mind will reject the original false idea, right,” Arthur says, sitting up properly now and fully alert. “The stronger the consequence, the more he’ll lean towards the idea you want him to have.”

Eames makes a pleased, humming noise. “Principle of association, yes.”

“But that sort of rejection – it’s destabilising. It could go too far, and then instead of getting an idea planted in, you’d just have your subject going insane.”

“It’s tricky,” Eames admits. “But apparently it works if it’s done right.”

“Statistics?”

“Don’t have them at the top of my head, as shocking a notion as that might be to you.”

As suddenly as it had come, the energy drains out of Arthur again and he sinks back down into the duvet, cradling the phone to his ear.

“Then we’ll see if the multiple plants work first, leave your one as a last resort,” he says.

  
\--

The shop has an old-fashioned door that tinkles whenever it’s pushed open or shut. It also has a sign forbidding food or drink. Arthur looks down at his hot chocolate balefully.

“Oh, here,” Eames says, taking Arthur’s cup and giving him his own cup of tea instead.

Somehow, that seems to be all that’s necessary. Arthur takes a sip from Eames’ cup, tasting the familiar Earl Grey, and then pushes at the shop door with the point of his shoulder. It swings open easily to reveal a clothes shop. Racks and racks of shirts line the four walls, seemingly without any particular system.

Next to Arthur, Eames makes a delighted noise.

“Hold my cup for me, will you,” Eames says, shoving it in Arthur’s direction. Arthur sighs and takes it grudgingly. “I need a couple of new shirts after what you did to the last ones, love.”

“They were _orange_ ,” Arthur protests indignantly. “Anything that orange and with that many stripes – ”

He stops, because at that moment he realises that both cups have disappeared from his hands. Arthur frowns and looks around him, then seems to remember putting both in the bin before entering the shop.

“What do you think, darling?” Eames says suddenly, presenting two shirts to Arthur with a sly grin on his face. Something flips in Arthur’s chest, like his heart skipping a beat. It never ceases to surprise him after all these years. “Do you prefer the – ”

  
\--

_You are not a traitor. That much you know, feel it carved into you. You are close enough to the keyhole that you could peer right through it, if you leant forward. You are not a traitor. You won’t give out any names. With some hidden knowledge you understand that you would never give names no matter what they did to you. This is a thing you live for. You don’t know what they have behind that door, but you feel distanced to it. You could be glancing down a telescope at this scene. You have the names – Eames, Cobb, Ariadne, Yusuf, Saito – you line them up and you hold them like holding a breath. You won’t give any names. You won’t give any names. It rises in you like a chorus. You won’t give any names._

_“Arthur,” the man warns. When you look at him, you know that he will shoot. “Tell me who they are.”_

_“No,” you tell him._

_The door opens. And then –_

  
\--

[01]

Arthur lifts his head and knows immediately that he’s fallen asleep in front of the laptop again. It’s open to a map of Jakarta, the wan light of it bleaching the open files he’s laid out, the crisp edges of paper an exact mirror-image of the red lines indented on Arthur’s cheek.

“Better you do that in the bedroom than in here,” says Eames.

“The lights are off,” Arthur manages.

“Didn’t want them to wake you.”

In the fresh splinter of light spilling in from the hall, Eames’ back stands out in bold relief in that familiar half-slouch. His shoulders are broad and the shirt that he’s wearing – a comparatively tame shade of blue – pulls taut on the points of his scapula. Arthur watches him test the trigger of the Smith and Wesson twice, both times with the safety on.

“Time?”

Eames looks up briefly from the gun. “Ten, I think. I’ll give you a call when I get to Jakarta.”

“Mmm.” Arthur levers himself up from the desk, feeling a coat slide off his shoulders. Eames’ work. “You all packed, then? You know how hot it gets, but take a jacket just in case it – ”

“ – gets cold at night, I know,” Eames interrupts. “You told me yesterday.”

“Raincoat?” Arthur says, almost accusingly.

Eames’ smile turns warm and blurred soft at the edges. “Yes, of course.”

“Don’t come back with some form of pneumonia.”

“Pneumonia and Jakarta don’t belong in the same sentence,” Eames reminds him. Arthur hums a little and, leaning close enough to smell cologne, rests the point of his chin against Eames’ shoulder.

“Or a bullet in the stomach. He’ll be panicked and scared, he’ll be expecting you to find him.”

“I’m _going_ to find him. Before Sunday.”

“Before _Saturday_ ,” Arthur corrects, brows raised. “You need to be _in_ Amsterdam by Sunday, Eames.”

Eames puts the gun down and snakes his arms around Arthur’s waist, nuzzling Arthur’s head to the side with his chin to get better access to Arthur’s neck. Arthur squirms a little involuntarily when Eames licks a spot behind his ear.

“Don’t,” Arthur warns half-heartedly. “Your taxi comes by the house in five.”

Eames murmurs something against Arthur’s hairline, then, “Say hello to Ariadne for me.”

“Say hi yourself when you get there, you flake.”

“Alright.”

Eames presses further in, just for a second, and Arthur can feel the heat through his clothes, Eames’ belt-clasp digging into Arthur’s hip. The steady rise and fall of Eames’ chest. In that isolated moment Arthur can almost imagine the rush of the blood through Eames’ veins, the inner workings of him, the very heave and shudder of a human heart Arthur can almost feel underneath his own ribs. If second chances are real, if second chances exist, Arthur thinks to himself that he’d be here again. He’d choose this. In the end, he would always choose this, no matter the risk or the consequence.

“You take care of yourself,” Eames mutters softly, as soft as a prayer. “Keep yourself in one – ”

  
\--

[Epilogue]

Some time ago, Arthur had very nearly died.

Eames had spent the night before Arthur’s thirty-first birthday with his knuckles white on the steering wheel of a car. Every minute or so he’d looked across the console at Arthur asleep in the passenger seat. The passing streetlamps had left a silvery coat on Arthur’s eyelashes, flashing in and out of the intermittent dark, a tiny curl of dark hair brushing Arthur’s temple and fluttering from the air-conditioning. There’d been blood along the side of Arthur’s face, the arterial spray of a man that Arthur had knifed. The long scratch on his cheek of a bullet graze. The importance, Eames had known then, lay in millimetres, how a single millimetre to the left or right was capable of changing the course of everything.

Eames had driven them to a motel, entering through the back way with Arthur scrubbing the exhausted sleep from his eyes. Eames had watched Arthur stumble into the shower; he’d waited some minutes, and then he’d followed him. With the pale light of sunrise stippling in through the windows, Eames had leant in the doorjamb and simply watched.

He had not watched for the sleek lines of Arthur’s body, the smooth skin and the endless-seeming legs. Those were things that Eames knew from the core of his heart already. Those were things that Eames had already memorised.

He’d watched for Arthur as an entire whole, as an entity all and of itself. Arthur was a compilation of things and Eames had looked until the borders of things became hazed, until an arm was no longer separate from a shoulder-joint, until what Arthur was blurred with what Eames himself was. Until the air between them was no longer a boundary. Until Eames had slid into the shower with him, felt Arthur turn with that look inside his brown eyes, something wordless and immeasurable.

“Here, let me get that,” Eames had said.

In the last moments before Eames pulls the trigger in Cobb’s house, he looks at Arthur. Some part of him hopes for a spark of insanity. Something that would lessen what it is that he’s about to do. But instead, all he sees is that very same look he’d once seen in a shower in Budapest: the same knowledge, the same unfaltering clarity, as if nothing in the universe had changed.

**Author's Note:**

> For updates on any future fics, feel free to add me on [Tumblr](http://epistolica.tumblr.com), [LiveJournal](http://epistolic.livejournal.com), or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/#!/epistolic)! ♥


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